McGlynn v Burns & Harris, Esq. 2024 NY Slip Op 00187 Decided on January 17, 2024
Appellate Division, Second Department illustrates the proposition that attorneys must try to prove all causes of an accident, even when one of them seems more important than the other. Attorneys also have to try to make sure there is insurance on the other side.

“In 2007, the plaintiff retained the defendant Burns & Harris, Esq. (hereinafter the B & H law firm), to represent him in the prosecution of an action to recover damages for personal injuries he allegedly sustained in March 2005 while working for United Parcel Service due to an allegedly defective condition on a loading dock in Brooklyn. The defendant Alison R. Keenan was the attorney assigned to handle the plaintiff’s case. The B & H law firm commenced two separate actions on the plaintiff’s behalf against alleged owners of the loading dock. The actions were consolidated (hereinafter the personal injury action), and a default judgment against all the defendants in the personal injury action was obtained, awarding the plaintiff the total sum of $255,914.50.

The plaintiff alleged that he was unable to collect the judgment because the insurance providers for the defendants in the personal injury action disclaimed coverage on the ground that timely notice of the claim was not provided. The plaintiff commenced this action against the B & H law firm and Keenan (hereinafter together the law firm defendants), among others, alleging, inter alia, legal malpractice for the failure to investigate and timely notify the applicable insurance carriers in the personal injury action.”

“Contrary to the Supreme Court’s determination, the law firm defendants failed to establish their prima facie entitlement to judgment as a matter of law dismissing the complaint insofar as asserted against them. The law firm defendants’ submissions in support of their motion did not establish, prima facie, the absence of at least one element of the legal malpractice cause of action (see Burbige v Siben & Ferber, 152 AD3d 641, 642). “Under the doctrine of judicial estoppel, also known as estoppel against inconsistent positions, a party may not take a position in a legal proceeding that is contrary to a position he or she took in a prior proceeding, simply because his or her interests have changed” (Bihn v Connelly, 162 AD3d 626, 627; see Archer v Beach Car Serv., Inc., 180 AD3d 857, 861). Here, the plaintiff’s allegation that he was injured due to a defect in the loading dock was not necessarily contrary to the position taken in his workers’ compensation claim that he suffered injuries while moving heavy boxes on the loading dock. There can be more than one proximate cause of a plaintiff’s injuries (see Scurry v New York City Hous. Auth., 39 NY3d 443, 454; Turturro v City of New York, 28 NY3d 469, 483; Moe-Salley v Highbridge House Ogden, LLC, 214 AD3d 722, 722; Reyes v S. Nicolia & Sons Realty Corp., 212 AD3d 851, 852). Accordingly, the court should have denied the law firm defendants’ motion for summary judgment dismissing the complaint insofar as asserted against them.”

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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.