Plaintiff is married to a former movie star, and late in life she seeks to revoke an irrevocable trust.  The money in the trust was hers prior to marriage, and in the transaction plaintiff nets $2 Million rather than $50,000.  He sues nevertheless.

Gallet, Dreyer & Berkey, LLP v Basile  2016 NY Slip Op 05332 Decided on July 5, 2016
Appellate Division, First Department is an example of how the courts obsessively search through the details of legal malpractice cases to determine whether the “but for” or “case within a case” elements is proven.

“As a signatory to the settlement, Basile certainly had the right to be fully informed of the facts and provided with appropriate advice by his attorney before agreeing to its terms, and we cannot conclude as a matter of law on this record that the law firm’s advice to Basile was complete and free of incorrect information. However, nothing in Basile’s submissions shows that but for that claimed negligence, he “would not have sustained actual and ascertainable damages” (Nomura, 26 NY3d at 50 [internal quotation marks omitted]).

The irrevocable trust was created and funded with Holm’s assets before Basile’s marriage to Holm. Basile had no current interest in the trust’s assets at the time of the settlement; he had, at best, a potential interest in those assets if the trust were to be set aside and the assets became part of Holm’s estate, entitling Basile to an elective share. Similarly, the claims addressed in the stipulation regarding other, non-trust assets also concerned property that belonged to Holm alone, and Basile had no present possessory right to them. Notwithstanding Basile’s residuary interest in Holm’s eventual estate, and the possibility that if Holm reacquired property that was previously transferred she would gift him a present interest, he had no established right to make any disposition of that property, or to claim ownership of any portion of that property, while she was alive. His lack of a present possessory interest in the property at issue severely restricts any rights to claim that the law firm’s alleged failures proximately caused him to experience a financial loss in relation to those properties.

More importantly, Basile has not presented an evidentiary showing supporting a claim to “actual and ascertainable damages,” as Nomura requires (26 NY3d at 50 [internal quotation marks omitted]). In cases presenting a valid claim of legal malpractice, the claimed “actual and ascertainable damages” have been clearly calculable (see e.g. Rudolf v Shayne, Dachs, Stanisci, Corker & Sauer, 8 NY3d 438 [2007]). In contrast, summary judgment dismissing the legal malpractice claim has been granted where the asserted damages are vague, unclear, or speculative (see Bellinson Law, LLC v Iannucci, 102 AD3d 563, 563 [1st Dept 2013]). Here, Basile essentially speculates that the information he lacked would have provided him with better leverage in negotiations, but he fails to show exactly how, if counsel had properly informed and advised him, the outcome of the litigation would have been more favorable to him. This is particularly so since the settlement netted him a distribution in excess of $2,000,000, as compared to the $25,000 he would have received under the trust alone, in the absence of the stipulation. The submissions simply do not justify a conclusion that Basile would have achieved a more favorable result in the absence of counsel’s claimed mistakes.”