Easily the winner in the most tangential legal malpracticeblog blurb, here is the story of a hollywood screenwriter, "The Hitcher", and legal malpractice. 

"The Weekly’s Paul Cullum described the accident as follows:

According to witness statements, [Red’s] Jeep struck his car a second time, gradually picking up speed, until it jackknifed the Honda into oncoming traffic … and suddenly it was going an estimated 35-40 miles per hour the wrong way across Wilshire, witnesses told police. It jumped the curb and obliterated a bus stop, scooping up 26-year-old Santa Monica City College English student David Roos, who was running for the safety of Q’s Billiards, located at 11835 Wilshire, immediately behind him. Taking out an outdoor patio of tables and scattering bodies…

Red, who also wrote the scripts for Near Dark and Blue Steel, then emerged from the car: "Still holding his car keys in his left hand, and bleeding from a small cut on his right eyebrow, Red walked a ways from the vehicle, just in time for Cassady Jeremias, one of Kenny Hughes’s friends in the car ahead of him, to see him pick up a sharp stick and begin ramming it into his chest. Interviewed recently, she remembers thinking, ‘Well, who’s this joker—he’s not going to kill himself with a stick jabbing himself in the chest?’ Undaunted, Red picked up a broken glass off the floor, approximately two inches thick, and slashed once at his neck, cutting it deeply."

Yow! After receiving medical attention, Red was sent to UCLA psychiatric ward and claimed he had a medical condition that caused fainting spells. He spent the next several years in and out of court dealing with civil suits and bankruptcy hearings but not, as he continued to request, a jury trial where he could explain the accident was a byproduct of his fainting. According to Cullum, Red wanted to appeal his way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Meanwhile, the families of his victims tried—and failed—to reopen the criminal case against him and Red sued his own attorneys for legal-malpractice.

But that’s all in the past, right? Red’s got two scripts in various stages of production (one directed by Speed director Jan de Bont). Roger Moore the Orlando Sentinel’s movie blogger, recently called Red "not an utter hack" and says he’s "actually looking forward" to the new Hitcher. Ain’t It Cool News’s Harry Knowles watched the trailer and squealed, "they’re definitely blowing shit up real good and given the laxed attitudes about gross stuff that the MPAA currently has, I’m betting the truck ripping scene will be real good."

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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.