The Court of Appeals rarely takes cases. Here, in Mid-Hudson Val. Fed. Credit Union v Quartararo & Lois, PLLC 2018 NY Slip Op 04034 Decided on June 7, 2018 the Court of Appeals had to hear the case, as there was a two-judge dissent in the Appellate Division. What was the case about? You would not know from the Court of Appeals Decision. From the AD decision:
“Plaintiff commenced this action against defendants alleging causes of action for legal malpractice, breach of contract and fraud. In particular, plaintiff alleged that it retained defendants to provide legal services in connection with the collection of debts and foreclosure matters in which plaintiff was the mortgagee. Prior to serving an answer, defendants moved to dismiss the complaint under CPLR 3016 and 3211 (a) (7). In opposition to defendants’ pre-answer motion, plaintiff submitted an amended complaint, which added two paragraphs but otherwise mirrored the original complaint.[FN1] Supreme Court granted defendants’ pre-answer motion to the extent of dismissing the breach of contract cause of action. Defendants now appeal.”
“A legal malpractice claim requires that the plaintiff show that “the defendant attorney failed to exercise the ordinary reasonable skill and knowledge commonly possessed by a member of the legal profession which results in actual damages to a plaintiff, and that the plaintiff would have succeeded on the merits of the underlying action ‘but for’ the attorney’s negligence” (AmBase Corp. v Davis Polk & Wardwell, 8 NY3d 428, 434 [2007] [citations omitted]; see Hinsdale v Weiermiller, 126 AD3d 1103, 1104 [2015]). The amended complaint alleged that, but for defendants’ failure to provide timely and competent legal services, plaintiff would have succeeded in the underlying debt collection and mortgage foreclosure actions. The amended complaint further alleged that “had [defendants] not failed to advise the cases in a timely and competent manner . . . , [plaintiff] would not have incurred a loss in time and value in the debt on the collection and foreclosure cases assigned to defendant[s].” Other than these vague and conclusory allegations, however, plaintiff failed to plead any specific facts, which, if accepted as true, would establish a legal malpractice claim. Absent from the amended complaint is any mention of an instance of deficient representation or any example of erroneous advice by defendants. Merely alleging the elements of a legal malpractice claim in a general fashion, without more, does not satisfy the liberal pleading standard of CPLR 3211. Furthermore, while a recitation of the elements of a cause of action may meet that component of CPLR 3013 requiring that the statements in a pleading provide notice of “the material elements of [a] cause of action,” the statute also requires that the pleading’s statements be “sufficiently particular to give the court and parties notice of the transactions, occurrences, or series of transactions or occurrences, intended to be proved” (CPLR 3013 [emphasis added]; cf. Matter of Garraway v Fischer, 106 AD3d 1301, 1301 [2013], lv denied 21 NY3d 864 [2013]; Eklund v Pinkey, 27 AD3d 878, 879 [2006]).”
“The statements in the amended complaint fail in this regard in that they do not allege a single transaction where defendants were retained to provide legal services or a single occurrence of negligent legal representation forming the basis of the legal malpractice claim, let alone the specific underlying foreclosure action or actions in which defendants allegedly committed legal malpractice. Other than stating that defendants represented plaintiff in foreclosure actions, the amended complaint does not allege, and, more critically, it cannot reasonably be inferred from such pleading, what defendants allegedly did or did not do in a negligent fashion. The amended complaint is not just sparse on factual details—rather, it is wholly devoid of them.[FN2] Given the [*3]absence of detailed facts, the legal malpractice cause of action should have been dismissed (see Janker v Silver, Forrester & Lesser, P.C., 135 AD3d 908, 910 [2016]; Rodriguez v Jacoby & Meyers, LLP, 126 AD3d at 1185-1186; Kreamer v Town of Oxford, 96 AD3d 1128, 1128 [2012]; compare Soule v Lozada, 232 AD2d 825, 825 [1996]).”