"It wasn't a good sign for Sacramento, Calif., attorney Stuart Somach on Wednesday when California Supreme Court Justice Joyce Kennard told him during oral arguments that he didn't have a single case to support his position.

Except, Kennard noted, one 2003 court of appeal ruling that she and some other justices seemed ready to void.

Somach, a partner with Somach Simmons & Dunn, had come to the San Francisco court to argue that staff attorneys for administrative law agencies shouldn't simultaneously serve as prosecutors in one matter while acting as advisers to the same agency in an unrelated case. Doing so, he said, violates the due process rights of parties that appear before the agencies.

"The goal here," Somach told the court, "is to have a neutral decision-maker."

The court's decision could affect attorneys within all state agencies as well as city attorneys' and county counsel's offices.

In the case before the court Wednesday, the Morongo Band of Mission Indians in 2004 sued the State Water Resources Control Board a year after the board revoked the tribe's water right license for a Southern California tributary for failing to apply the resource to a beneficial use. The Morongo Band accused the agency's five-member board of possible bias in that staff attorney Samantha Olson not only prosecuted the case against the tribe, but also advised the board in an unrelated, separate matter involving the American River. Although the tribe was not involved in the second matter, it was concerned that both cases were being handled by the same lawyer before the same board.

The tribe insisted that even if there wasn't actual bias, there was the appearance of it. After all, the tribe argued, board members could easily find favor with prosecutors who serve as their advisers in other matters. "

Get the Story:
State of California Appears Favored in Attorney Conflict Case (The Recorder 1/8)