Is relief justifiable where there is a complete disappearance of a plaintiff's attorney?

In Vindigni v. Meyer, 441 F.2d 376 (2d Cir. 1971), relief was justifiable where there was "the unusual fact of the complete disappearance of plaintiff's attorney." Id. at 377. In the present case we have the possibly unique fact of what we may term the "constructive disappearance" of defendants' attorney, who was allegedly suffering from a psychological disorder which led him to neglect almost completely his clients' business while at the same time assuring them that he was attending to it, and who had made himself unavailable even to the trial judge.