Appel-Hole v. Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories, 700000/98
Decided: March 27, 2007

Justice Charles Edward Ramos

NEW YORK COUNTY
Supreme Court

Justice Ramos
In motion seq. no. 007, Parker and Waichman LLP (P&W), on its own behalf and on behalf of its clients, moves pursuant to CPLR 2221 for leave to renew or reargue its motion to intervene (previously denied by order dated November 24, 2003). In addition to P&W, proposed intervenors referred to as the "Abramova Plaintiffs," also seek leave to intervene. In the event intervention is granted, P&W and the Abramova Plaintiffs seek disclosure of certain documents referred to as submissions in support of the amended order dated November 7, 2001, which approved the settlement of this action and will then seek to vacate that settlement order.1

In this action, known as the New York Diet Drug Litigation,

New York County Index No. 700000/98, plaintiffs asserted claims of personal injury and loss of consortium allegedly due to the ingestion of "fen-phen" diet drugs.2 Some of those plaintiffs and others are here challenging a settlement approved by our predecessor court (Freedman, J.) by her order dated November 7, 2001, which, inter alia, held that the terms of the settlement were fair and reasonable and conformed with all ethical requirements. In that settlement, defendant, American Home Products ("AHP"), offered a large sum of money3 to settle virtually all claims.4

The ethical issues raised in this case arise out of one of the thorniest areas in tort law – the process to be applied in the settlement of mass tort litigation. Because of the large number of claimants whose cases are settled at one time (in this case over 5,000), mass tort settlements often take the form of collective settlement structures. The alternative to a collective settlement would require the piecemeal analysis of the merits of each claim and individual settlements thereafter, as contemplated when the classic case dominated tort law (one injured plaintiff and one or more allegedly responsible defendants). This would consume the lifetime of many of the claimants themselves when there are thousands of claims to be compromised. As a consequence, counsel and the courts have devised means of settlement expedition, such as the placing of claimants in objective categories of severity of injury, age, gender, economic status, and each claimant’s relationship to the acts of the defendant, and then entering into a mass settlement. Because of the large number of clients, great care must be exercised to insure that each client understands the settlement offer and is treated fairly. Ethical rules guide the actions of counsel in these circumstances.

This mass settlement was further complicated by the need to pay a portion of the attorneys’ fees earned by settling counsel to other attorneys who referred additional clients. Therefore, claimants who were the original clients of the settling attorneys, Napoli Kaiser & Bern ("Napoli Firm"), would generate greater net legal fees for the firm than would clients who were referred to them by other attorneys (e.g. P&W and others).

The record on this motion, which includes a number of previously sealed documents and an affidavit of a former member of the Napoli Firm, has unfortunately raised serious questions regarding the settlement process herein, including claims that:

(1) claimants who were Napoli Firm clients were offered disproportionately larger settlements because the firm unfairly inflated settlement offers for its clients so that the attorneys’ fees earned by the firm would be greater;

(2) unknown to the claimants, their cases were not settled for an amount negotiated for each claimant with AHP, rather their claims were settled based upon the Napoli Firm’s own evaluation of the value of each claim in light of a lump sum offer;5

(3) the Special Master6 appointed by the settling court did not make individual evaluations of the settlement offers in each case as was represented by the Napoli Firm to its clients and to the settling court; and

(4) the ethics opinion submitted in support of the settlement was flawed and based upon less than a full understanding by the expert of the circumstances surrounding the settlement and the applicable law.

Notwithstanding the Napoli Firm’s protestations to the contrary, no court, trial or appellate, has ruled on these issues in a contested hearing. This is explained by the fact that the order of compromise sought to be vacated here, dated November 7, 2001, was submitted to our predecessor court and executed, ex parte.7

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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.