Poor Diligencing of Defendants

Real estate closing costs are a tangled mess, so I’m generally happy to see some consumer protection litigation over them. One case involved a $60 “fax fee” charged by title companies. The lawyers try to form a class action against the title companies for charging these fees. Only problem? One of the plaintiff’s lawyers also owns a title company that’s named as a defendant. While that seems to violate a number of ethics rules, incredibly the judge doesn’t disqualify him from the lawsuit. Irrespective of the litigation conflicts, I wonder if the lawyer got appropriate waivers for doing business with his client (representing home buyer as attorney when home buyer chose the title company owned by the attorney).