No decision has been published yet, but Anthony Lin at the NYLJ reports that this legal malpractice case has been dismissed.  It arises from representation of nieces and nephews of holocost victims from the 1930’s.

"A Manhattan federal judge has thrown out a legal malpractice suit arising out of competing Holocaust restitution claims.

In 2005, a group of nieces and nephews of Jewish publisher and art collector Gustav Kirstein and his wife Clara, both of whom died in Germany in the 1930s, sued their former lawyer, New York’s David J. Rowland, claiming his mistakes caused them to have to share restored property and funds with another claimant.

But in Nordwind v. Rowland, No. 04 Civ. 9725, Judge Donald C. Pogue, sitting by designation in the Southern District of New York from the U.S. Court of International Trade, granted summary judgment to Rowland, finding that the relevant German restitution law would not have permitted the nieces and nephews a full recovery.

After their deaths, the Kirsteins’ estate passed to their daughters, Gabrielle Jacobsen and Marianna Baer, both of whom had emigrated to New York, where Jacobsen died in 1957 and Baer died in 1986.

The nieces and nephews retained Rowland in 1998 to represent them in seeking restitution for property lost or seized during Nazi rule. That included a number of art works as well as bank accounts. The nieces and nephews had been assigned Marianna Baer’s interest in the Kirstein estate by her daughter-in-law Miriam Reitz Baer.

But Jacobsen’s interest passed to her adopted son Godfrey, who died in 1980, naming a woman called Christel Gauger as his sole heir. Rowland determined Gauger held Gabrielle Jacobsen’s interest and sought to represent her as well. She would receive a 50 percent interest in property and funds restored to the Kirstein estate, with the other half going to the nieces and nephews. "