Here is a textbook example of how the statute of limitations in legal malpractice is stretched to the extreme, yet plaintiff loses.  In 2003 defendants wrote an opinion letter which was contrary to the IRS determination which came in 2007.  Attorneys (or related attorneys) were retained in 2007 to fight the IRS and lost in 2011.  5 months later plaintiff sued.  Timely or too late? 

Landow v Snow Becker Krauss, P.C.   2013 NY Slip Op 07710   Decided on November 20, 2013
Appellate Division, Second Department   holds that they were too late, and for the reason that more than 3 years went by between the engagements in 2003 and 2007. Legal Malpractice continuing representation requires that there be no 3 year period between the islands of representation.  Hence, continuous representation does not permit the archipelago theory of strung out islands of representation with more than 3 years of ocean between them.
 

""On a motion to dismiss a complaint pursuant to CPLR 3211(a)(5) on statute of limitations grounds, the moving defendant must establish, prima facie, that the time in which to [*2]commence the action has expired" (Zaborowski v Local 74, Serv. Empls. Intl. Union, AFL-CIO, 91 AD3d 768, 768-769). In a legal malpractice action, the statute of limitations is three years (see CPLR 214[6]). "A legal malpractice claim accrues when all the facts necessary to the cause of action have occurred and an injured party can obtain relief in court’" (McCoy v Feinman, 99 NY2d 295, 301, quoting Ackerman v Price Waterhouse, 84 NY2d 535, 541). Here, the defendants met their prima facie burden by establishing that the cause of action alleging legal malpractice accrued on March 5, 2003, the date they allegedly issued the opinion letter advising the plaintiff that the proposed sale would not result in the loss of his tax deferment status (see Ackerman v Price Waterhouse, 84 NY2d at 541-543; Byron Chem. Co., Inc. v Groman, 61 AD3d 909). Although the plaintiff did not discover that his attorneys’ alleged advice was incorrect until years later, " [w]hat is important is when the malpractice was committed, not when the client discovered it’" (McCoy v Feinman, 99 NY2d at 301, quoting Shumsky v Eisenstein, 96 NY2d 164, 166). Therefore, since the defendants demonstrated that the plaintiff did not commence this action until December 29, 2011, more than three years after his claim for legal malpractice accrued, the defendants established, prima facie, that the claim was time-barred.

Upon that showing, the burden then shifted to the plaintiff to raise a question of fact as to whether he actually commenced the action within three years after the legal malpractice cause of action accrued, the statute of limitations was tolled, or the statute of limitations relied on by the defendants was otherwise inapplicable (see Zaborowski v Local 74, Serv. Empls. Intl. Union, AFL-CIO, 91 AD3d at 769). The plaintiff, in opposition to the defendants’ showing, relies on the continuous representation doctrine as a toll of the three-year statute of limitations; however, he failed to raise a question of fact in this regard. As evidenced by, inter alia, the more than four-year period of time between the issuance of the opinion letter and the plaintiff’s alleged retention of the defendants in July 2007, during which no further legal representation was undertaken with respect to the subject matter of the opinion letter, the parties did not contemplate that any further representation was needed (see McCoy v Feinman, 99 NY2d at 306; Byron Chem. Co., Inc. v Groman, 61 AD3d at 911).

Accordingly, the Supreme Court properly granted those branches of the defendants’ respective motions which were pursuant to CPLR 3211(a)(5) to dismiss, as time-barred, the cause of action alleging legal malpractice. "