In Coalition of Landlords, Homeowners, & Merchants, Inc. v Glass, https://www.nycourts.gov/reporter/3dseries/2025/2025_05936.htm2025 NY Slip Op 05936 [242 AD3d 1172] October 29, 2025 Appellate Division, Second Department it was alleged that a false lease was used to defeat a claim. The Judiciary Law 487 claim was that the attorneys knew the lease was false and offered it anyways. The Court dismissed.

“The plaintiffs commenced this action against the defendants, attorneys for the plaintiffs’ former landlord, alleging, among other things, that the defendants knowingly submitted a fraudulent 2010 lease agreement (hereinafter the 2010 lease) to the District Court, Suffolk County, in connection with a holdover proceeding (see Anthi New Neocronon Corp. v Coalition of Landlords, 73 Misc 3d 136[A], 2021 NY Slip Op 51067[U] [App Term, 2d Dept, 9th & 10th Jud Dists 2021]) and to the Supreme Court, Suffolk County, in connection with a plenary action commenced by the plaintiffs seeking, inter alia, a judgment declaring their rights pursuant to a purported purchase agreement for the building where they rented their offices (see Coalition of Landlords, Homeowners & Merchants, Inc. v S. & A. Neocronon, Inc., 224 AD3d 658 [2024]). The defendants moved pursuant to CPLR 3211 (a) (1) and (7) to dismiss the amended complaint. The plaintiffs opposed. In an order dated December 18, 2021, the Supreme Court granted the motion. The plaintiffs appeal.”

“”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” (Altman v DiPreta, 204 AD3d 965, 968 [2022]; see Mohammad v Rehman, 236 AD3d 892, 894 [2025]). “Relief pursuant to Judiciary Law § 487 is not lightly given, and requires a showing of egregious conduct or a chronic and extreme pattern of behavior on the part of the defendant attorneys” (Kaufman v Moritt Hock & Hamroff, LLP, 192 AD3d 1092, 1093 [2021] [citation and internal quotation marks omitted]). Here, the plaintiffs failed to allege that the defendants engaged in egregious conduct or a chronic and extreme pattern of behavior.”

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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.