Legal malpractice cases come up in all kinds of settings.  It may be the individual personal injury plaintiff whose case was not started on time; it may be the car accident in which the doctor’s reports failed to give the necessary descriptions of the injury and the case was dismissed, and sometimes it can be hedge funds complaining about loans gone bad because of faulty legal advice.  Here, in Genesis Merchant Partner v. Gilbride Tusa, 653145/2014 we see some of the big boys at play.

Christine Simmons, in today’s New York Law Journal reports that: "Two investment funds have sued 20-attorney Gilbride, Tusa, Last & Spellane for malpractice, claiming the firm failed to perfect the funds’ security interest in life insurance policies, leading to more than $84 million in damages.
"This is an open-and-shut case of legal malpractice and gross incompetence by Gilbride Tusa," the funds claim in Genesis Merchant Partner v. Gilbride Tusa, 653145/2014 (See Complaint).
But Gilbride Tusa in a statement called the suit’s allegations "false, inaccurate and distorted versions of the events that seek to blame others for an unsuccessful loan of approximately $3 million made by the plaintiffs."

"Gilbride, Tusa, Last & Spellane denies these baseless allegations and anticipates being totally vindicated in court. In addition, we expect to obtain a judgment against the plaintiffs for the substantial unpaid legal fees owed to the Gilbride firm," said Joseph Francoeur and Thomas Leghorn, partners at Wilson Elser Moskowitz Edelman & Dicker who represent the firm.
The plaintiffs are investment funds Genesis Merchant Partners LP and Genesis Merchant Partners II LP, created by hedge fund Sands Brothers Asset Management. They are suing Gilbride Tusa, which has offices in New York and Connecticut, and Connecticut-based partners Jonathan Wells, Kenneth Gammill Jr. and Charles Tusa.

Genesis claims the funds paid Gilbride Tusa about $60,000 in legal fees to draft secured loan documents for about $4.4 million in loans to Progressive Capital Solutions LLC.
Progressive was a buyer of "life settlement" policies, which are life insurance policies that have been sold by their initial owners and are traded on a secondary market."

 

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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.

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