The split between Johnny Doc and his former lawyers is getting messy. He hopes it’s enough to overturn his conviction.

The falling-out between John J. Dougherty and the law firm that represented him at his 2021 bribery trial is getting messier.

And the former labor leader now hopes the dispute could help him overturn his conviction and spare him from a second trial next month on charges he and others embezzled more than $600,000 from their union.

In recent court filings, Dougherty’s new attorneys argue that the legal defense provided to him by the Center City law firm Ballard Spahr was compromised due to conflicts of interests involving the firm’s other clients, including the cable giant Comcast and Local 98 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the union Dougherty led for nearly three decades before resigning as its business manager in 2021.

They have asked a federal judge to postpone his April 24 embezzlement trial until a hearing can be held to determine whether the law firm’s past representation of both Comcast and Local 98 may have negatively affected the legal strategy deployed by his former defense team led by attorney Henry E. Hockeimer Jr.

“There are certain conflicts that are so serious that they can’t be waived,” new lawyer Caroline A. Cinquanto said at a court hearing last week. Dougherty’s conviction, she added, “is going to be overturned. I have no doubt.”

Despite that bold pronouncement, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey L. Schmehl has offered little indication of how willing he is to entertain Dougherty’s new legal argument.

The ex-union chief and Hockeimer — head of Ballard Spahr’s white-collar defense division — parted ways last year after what the attorney described as a “total breakdown in communication” and concern that their relationship had become “unworkable” in the run-up to Dougherty’s second trial.

But to overturn his bribery conviction and trigger the dismissal of the remaining charges, Dougherty would have to prove not only that conflicts of interest existed but that he did not waive them and that they so negatively affected his defense that it violated his rights to a fair trial.

It’s unlikely that Dougherty was completely unaware at the time he chose Hockeimer to be his defense lawyer of the conflicts he is now citing.

Hockeimer and representatives from Ballard Spahr declined to comment on Dougherty’s latest legal gambit. But should Schmehl grant the hearing Dougherty is seeking, they would likely be called to testify.

Dougherty’s argument centers on two main points — the most significant, Cinquanto and cocounsel Alan J. Tauber say, being that Ballard Spahr counts Comcast among its biggest clients.

Witnesses from the company played a central role in Dougherty’s 2021 bribery trial alongside Philadelphia City Councilmember Bobby Henon.

In that case, prosecutors accused Dougherty of using Henon and his City Council seat to strong-arm Comcast into granting labor concessions to Local 98 during 2015 negotiations over the cable company’s franchise agreement with the city.

» READ MORE: John Dougherty struck a secret side deal with Comcast during city franchise negotiations, a former Council staffer testified

The franchise agreement governs the terms under which the city allows Comcast the right to build out and operate its cable network on publicly owned lands.

Prosecutors accused Henon of improperly injecting Dougherty into the talks and making it clear that City Council would not approve any deal without the labor leader’s sign-off.

Comcast executives testified that to secure the franchise deal, they struck a side agreement with Dougherty outside of the public legislative process in which they committed to using union contractors for work in Center City office buildings.

Dougherty’s camp now alleges it’s possible that Hockeimer and the rest of his Ballard Spahr team failed to aggressively cross-examine the Comcast representatives who testified at Dougherty’s bribery trial — including senior vice president Mark Reilly and vice president Kathleen Sullivan — to avoid endangering their firm’s ongoing relationship with the company.

“It is clear from the facts of this case that the representation by [Ballard Spahr] of Comcast and [Hockeimer] of Mr. Dougherty was completely inappropriate,” Cinquanto said.

Several factors could work against Dougherty’s argument that a conflict of interest existed or harmed his defense.

It is not uncommon for large law firms like Ballard Spahr to design internal controls when representing clients whose interests diverge. For instance, firms often wall off teams of attorneys representing opposing clients, to avoid even accidental discussion of legal strategies that could give one an unfair advantage over another.

What’s more, Dougherty and Henon were not charged with defrauding Comcast, so the company is not legally considered a victim in the case. Instead, Comcast executives served as witnesses to bolster prosecutors’ claims that the bribes the labor leader paid Henon defrauded Philadelphia’s citizens of his honest services as an elected official.

And Ballard Spahr’s ties to Comcast were hardly a secret — especially to Dougherty.

David L. Cohen, Comcast’s then-senior executive vice president and the public face of the company in Philadelphia, had previously served as managing partner at Ballard Spahr from 1997 to 2002.

And when Local 98 was negotiating that 2015 side agreement with Comcast, it did so through Ballard Spahr attorneys representing the cable company, the executives who testified at the trial said.

A Comcast spokesperson Monday declined to comment on the matter.

Dougherty’s lawyers have also questioned how past legal work Ballard Spahr did for Local 98 may have affected his defense — an argument that could come into play at the embezzlement trial.

In that case, prosecutors allege Dougherty and five other union officials and members spent $600,000 in union cash on personal shopping sprees, pricey restaurant dinners, lavish trips, and home repairs. Under the government’s theory of the case, Local 98 is the victim of Dougherty’s misdeeds.

The same firm representing both the alleged victim and the alleged perpetrator in a case would present a significant conflict of interest.

But so far, Dougherty’s new attorneys have not produced any evidence in court that Ballard Spahr did work for the union specifically related to the alleged embezzlement scheme.

According to Local 98′s financial filings with the U.S. Department of Labor, the union paid the law firm more than $515,000 for “legal services” between 2007 and 2016.

William T. Josem, an attorney for the union, balked at the idea that those payments posed any potential conflict for Dougherty’s current legal troubles.

The union, which has its own team of in-house and outside lawyers, specifically contracted with Ballard Spahr to represent Dougherty’s interests as its then-leader in both the long-running criminal investigation and other matters, Josem said.

Local 98 stopped paying Dougherty’s legal bills, Josem added, once the labor leader was indicted in 2019.

“Hockeimer and his Ballard Spahr cocounsel served as John Dougherty’s personal attorneys,” Josem said. “At no time did Ballard Spahr perform legal work for Local 98.”

While it remains to be seen whether Dougherty can gain any traction with his new legal argument, it seems unlikely it will significantly delay his embezzlement trial next month.

Schmehl, the judge, has yet to issue a ruling on the matter. But he seemed disinclined at a court hearing last week to postpone the trial to hold the hearing Dougherty’s lawyers are seeking. He instead signaled he would rather conduct any review into potential conflicts of interest after the conclusion of Dougherty’s embezzlement trial.

Either way, the issue is likely to resurface when Dougherty appeals his bribery conviction to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

For their part, government lawyers say they’re not opposed to exploring the issue of potential conflicts of interest in a hearing. But Assistant U.S. Attorney Bea Witzleben told the judge, prosecutors don’t concede that any conflicts existed or that they resulted in Dougherty failing to receive a fair trial.

“The idea that the indictment should be dismissed entirely is just not serious,” she said.