1. Fontaine v. Matthews, 7654-7654A , SUPREME COURT OF NEW YORK, APPELLATE DIVISION, FIRST DEPARTMENT , 2006 NY Slip Op 388; January 24, 2006, Decided,It appears that the underlying federal action was brought by plaintiff, a seaman, against the owner of his ship [**2] to recover for personal injuries sustained in an assault by a fellow crewman. Although defendant represented plaintiff throughout the course of the pretrial proceedings in the federal action, and agreed to continue to represent plaintiff after suffering a stroke, as indicated in the transcript of the pretrial hearing before the magistrate and by his meaningful participation in the deposition of the ship’s medical expert, he failed to appear at the trial. This forced plaintiff and defendant’s co-counsel, enlisted by defendant after his stroke, to go to trial without defendant present.

2. Mahler v. Torres, 2005-03596 , SUPREME COURT OF NEW YORK, APPELLATE DIVISION, SECOND DEPARTMENT , 2006 NY Slip Op 487; January 24, 2006, Decided, The compliance conference order dated May 17, 2004, directing the plaintiff to serve and file a note of issue by September 13, 2004, and warning that the failure to comply would result in dismissal, had the same effect as a valid 90-day notice pursuant to CPLR 3216. Here, the plaintiff failed to demonstrate that his cause of action to recover damages for legal malpractice was meritorious.

3. Braun v. Rosenblum, 2005-00565 , SUPREME COURT OF NEW YORK, APPELLATE DIVISION, SECOND DEPARTMENT , 2006 NY Slip Op 467; January 24, 2006, Decided, “Although generally a defendant attorney is liable to the plaintiff for the claim he would have recovered in the dismissed suit . . . punitive damages are not included in this general claim theory. Thus, the plaintiffs may not recover in the instant legal malpractice action for any punitive damages that were [*2] “lost” when the underlying personal injury action was dismissed.”

4. Hayes v. Wilson, 2004-09558, 2005-01054 , SUPREME COURT OF NEW YORK, APPELLATE DIVISION, SECOND DEPARTMENT , 2006 NY Slip Op 336; “On a motion to dismiss a cause of action pursuant to CPLR 3211(a)(7), the court must accept the factual allegations of the complaint as true and accord the plaintiff all favorable inferences which may be drawn therefrom.Under this standard, the plaintiff’s complaint failed to sufficiently plead a cause of action against the defendant. However, the complaint sufficiently pleaded a cause of action to recover damages for legal malpractice against the second defendant”

5. Richter v. Davidson & Cohen, P.C., 2004-05729, Index No. 10115/04 , SUPREME COURT OF NEW YORK, APPELLATE DIVISION, SECOND DEPARTMENT , 2006 NY Slip Op 343; Client was not collaterally estopped from raising the issue of whether the attorney had actual authority to settle.

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Andrew Lavoott Bluestone

Andrew Lavoott Bluestone has been an attorney for 40 years, with a career that spans criminal prosecution, civil litigation and appellate litigation. Mr. Bluestone became an Assistant District Attorney in Kings County in 1978, entered private practice in 1984 and in 1989 opened…

Andrew Lavoott Bluestone has been an attorney for 40 years, with a career that spans criminal prosecution, civil litigation and appellate litigation. Mr. Bluestone became an Assistant District Attorney in Kings County in 1978, entered private practice in 1984 and in 1989 opened his private law office and took his first legal malpractice case.

Since 1989, Bluestone has become a leader in the New York Plaintiff’s Legal Malpractice bar, handling a wide array of plaintiff’s legal malpractice cases arising from catastrophic personal injury, contracts, patents, commercial litigation, securities, matrimonial and custody issues, medical malpractice, insurance, product liability, real estate, landlord-tenant, foreclosures and has defended attorneys in a limited number of legal malpractice cases.

Bluestone also took an academic role in field, publishing the New York Attorney Malpractice Report from 2002-2004.  He started the “New York Attorney Malpractice Blog” in 2004, where he has published more than 4500 entries.

Mr. Bluestone has written 38 scholarly peer-reviewed articles concerning legal malpractice, many in the Outside Counsel column of the New York Law Journal. He has appeared as an Expert witness in multiple legal malpractice litigations.

Mr. Bluestone is an adjunct professor of law at St. John’s University College of Law, teaching Legal Malpractice.  Mr. Bluestone has argued legal malpractice cases in the Second Circuit, in the New York State Court of Appeals, each of the four New York Appellate Divisions, in all four of  the U.S. District Courts of New York and in Supreme Courts all over the state.  He has also been admitted pro haec vice in the states of Connecticut, New Jersey and Florida and was formally admitted to the US District Court of Connecticut and to its Bankruptcy Court all for legal malpractice matters. He has been retained by U.S. Trustees in legal malpractice cases from Bankruptcy Courts, and has represented municipalities, insurance companies, hedge funds, communications companies and international manufacturing firms. Mr. Bluestone regularly lectures in CLEs on legal malpractice.

Based upon his professional experience Bluestone was named a Diplomate and was Board Certified by the American Board of Professional Liability Attorneys in 2008 in Legal Malpractice. He remains Board Certified.  He was admitted to The Best Lawyers in America from 2012-2019.  He has been featured in Who’s Who in Law since 1993.

In the last years, Mr. Bluestone has been featured for two particularly noteworthy legal malpractice cases.  The first was a settlement of an $11.9 million dollar default legal malpractice case of Yeo v. Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman which was reported in the NYLJ on August 15, 2016. Most recently, Mr. Bluestone obtained a rare plaintiff’s verdict in a legal malpractice case on behalf of the City of White Plains v. Joseph Maria, reported in the NYLJ on February 14, 2017. It was the sole legal malpractice jury verdict in the State of New York for 2017.

Bluestone has been at the forefront of the development of legal malpractice principles and has contributed case law decisions, writing and lecturing which have been recognized by his peers.  He is regularly mentioned in academic writing, and his past cases are often cited in current legal malpractice decisions. He is recognized for his ample writings on Judiciary Law § 487, a 850 year old statute deriving from England which relates to attorney deceit.

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