A frequent defense in legal malpractice is that while a mistake has been made, plaintiff is not hury anyway.  Here is one example of that defense in a New Jersey CaseTHE MAKE UP BAR, Inc.
Plaintiff-Appellant, vs. COOPER, LEVENSON, APRIL, NIEDELMAN & WAGENHEIM, P.A., and ROBERT E. SALAD, ESQ.,

A hair stylist is hired by plaintiff, and plaintiff asks its attorney to prepare a "no-hire" agreement.  Instead, a "no-solicitation" agreement is prepared.  Is there a difference?

"Severino, a hairdresser, claims that she retained attorney Salad to draft a "no-hire" agreement for execution by Scerati, a hairdresser whom she had agreed to employ for a short period until his own salon, Blink Spa, was opened. Instead, she claims Salad drafted a "non-solicitation" agreement, which proved effectively unenforceable when, in an injunctive action filed by The Make-up Bar against Scerati in the Chancery Division after four of The Make-up Bar’s employees had found employment at Scerati’s salon, each certified that he or she had not been solicited by Scerati. Scerati corroborated the employees’ position in his own certification, and he stated additionally that he would not have signed a no-hire agreement if it had been presented to him. The action filed against Scerati was dismissed without prejudice with Severino’s consent.

In its complaint, plaintiff simply alleged that it "suffered damages" and "substantial business losses" as a result of defendants’ failure to draft an appropriate agreement that would enjoin Scerati from hiring plaintiff’s employees for a certain period of time. In support of its claim, plaintiff provided a single-page submission of handwritten calculations that purported to identify the revenue generated by the four employees during 2001 and 2002. Plaintiff’s only expert, attorney Barry E. Levine, provided a report completely devoid of any assessment of damages. Levine testified that he was unaware of the attrition rate of beauty salon employees and that he had performed no investigation into the matter, formal or otherwise. Further, neither Severino nor Levine, as lay and expert witnesses, produced evidence of the specific business diverted to the other salon by its hiring of plaintiff’s four former employees. Plaintiff failed to identify which customers, if any, followed the employees to the other salon and which customers continued to patronize it. Moreover, plaintiff did not commission any analysis or comparison of profits generated or clients lost before and after the employees left plaintiff salon. In opposition to defendants’ motion, plaintiff merely set forth that it was damaged in the amount noted in Severino’s handwritten exhibit.

Plaintiff filed its complaint for legal malpractice on February 13, 2004. Following the reversal of the first summary judgment and remand to the trial court, defendants renewed their motion for summary judgment after additional discovery. As in its first motion for summary judgment, defendants conceded for purposes of the motion that they failed to prepare the agreement that Severino requested. In support of their motion, Scerati certified that he would not have signed a more restrictive agreement. "

 

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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.