Successful Judiciary Law § 487 cases are very rare.  The hurdles are quite high for the proponent as is shown in Cordell Marble Falls, LLC v Kelly
2021 NY Slip Op 00833 [191 AD3d 760] February 10, 2021 Appellate Division, Second Department.

“In April 2013, nonparty Whitecap (US) Fund, L.P. (hereinafter Whitecap), commenced an action against the plaintiffs in which it was alleged, inter alia, that the plaintiffs breached their fiduciary duties related to a land development project (hereinafter the prior action). The defendants, Munsch Hardt Kopf & Harr, P.C., and Cara Mittleman Kelly, were the attorneys who represented Whitecap in the prior action. During the course of the prior action, Whitecap submitted affidavits executed by Eric Kamisher and Westin Lovy in which they stated that the plaintiffs failed to provide required financial disclosure. In October 2013, after it was learned that the plaintiffs had complied with their financial disclosure obligations, the Supreme Court granted Whitecap’s motion to voluntarily discontinue the prior action.

Thereafter, the plaintiffs commenced this action against the defendants to recover damages for violation of Judiciary Law § 487 based on the defendants’ filing of the Kamisher and Lovy affidavits in the prior action, which the plaintiffs alleged contained knowingly false [*2]information intended to deceive the Supreme Court. The defendants moved pursuant to CPLR 3211 (a) to dismiss the complaint. In an order entered October 23, 2017, the Supreme Court granted the defendants’ motion. Subsequently, a judgment was entered on November 21, 2017, in favor of the defendants and against the plaintiffs, dismissing the complaint. The plaintiffs appeal.

“In assessing the adequacy of a complaint under CPLR 3211 (a) (7), the court must give the pleading a liberal construction, accept the facts alleged in the complaint to be true and afford the plaintiff ‘the benefit of every possible favorable inference’ ” (J.P. Morgan Sec. Inc. v Vigilant Ins. Co., 21 NY3d 324, 334 [2013], quoting AG Capital Funding Partners, L.P. v State St. Bank & Trust Co., 5 NY3d 582, 591 [2005]). “A court is, of course, permitted to consider evidentiary material submitted by a defendant in support of a motion to dismiss pursuant to CPLR 3211 (a) (7)” (Sokol v Leader, 74 AD3d 1180, 1181 [2010]; see CPLR 3211 [c]). “If the court considers evidentiary material, the criterion then becomes ‘whether the proponent of the pleading has a cause of action, not whether he [or she] has stated one’ ” (Sokol v Leader, 74 AD3d at 1181-1182, quoting Guggenheimer v Ginzburg, 43 NY2d 268, 275 [1977]). “[B]are legal conclusions and factual claims which are flatly contradicted by the record are not presumed to be true” (Parola, Gross & Marino, P.C. v Susskind, 43 AD3d 1020, 1021-1022 [2007]).

Under Judiciary Law § 487 (1), an attorney who “[i]s guilty of any deceit or collusion, or consents to any deceit or collusion, with intent to deceive the court or any party” is liable to the injured party for treble damages (see Shaffer v Gilberg, 125 AD3d 632, 636 [2015]; Curry v Dollard, 52 AD3d 642, 644 [2008]). “[V]iolation of Judiciary Law § 487 requires an intent to deceive” (Moormann v Perini & Hoerger, 65 AD3d 1106, 1108 [2009]) as opposed to conduct which is negligent. Here, the evidentiary material submitted by the defendants in support of their motion, which included, among other things, the motion papers filed in the prior action and excerpts of Lovy’s deposition testimony given in the prior action, was sufficient to demonstrate that the fact as alleged by the plaintiffs—that the defendants knew that certain statements set forth in the Kamisher and Lovy affidavits when submitted in the prior action were false with intent to deceive the court—was not a fact at all (see Shaffer v Gilberg, 125 AD3d at 636; Siskin v Cassar, 122 AD3d 714, 717 [2014]; see generally Guggenheimer v Ginzburg, 43 NY2d at 274-275). The complaint, as amplified by the plaintiffs’ evidentiary submissions in opposition to the defendants’ motion, contained only conclusory allegations, without any factual basis, that the defendants acted to deceive the court when submitting the Kamisher and Lovy affidavits in the prior action (see generally Patel v Gardens at Forest Hills Owners Corp., 181 AD3d 611, 613 [2020]).”

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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.