Legal Malpractice claims accrue at the time a mistake is made. The Statute of limitations in legal malpractice, three years, is a difficult and high barrier to overcome. Continuous representation may toll the running of the statute, but social policy has set a number of elements required for continuous representation to be permitted. Stein Indus.,
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 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.
Work Product Discovery in Professional Negligence Cases
What is discoverable and what is not discoverable in a professional negligence setting influences the viability of the claims. Attorney-Client privilege, work-product privilege and burdensomeness are all considerations in whether the material is discoverable. Judge Shulman gives a cogent explanation of the competing arguments in American Med. Alert Corp. v Evanston Ins. Co.
2018 NY…
It’s Different For Criminals in Legal Malpractice
There are a whole group of social policy roadblocks to legal malpractice litigation. The additional element of “but for” causation is one; the requirement of privity is another; the exemption for strategic decisions is a third. A very black and white limitation is that of legal malpractice by a criminal defense lawyer. Put in short,…
Court Appointed Appraiser Not Liable to the Parties
Court appoints a jewelry appraiser as a neutral, and the neutral then send retainer agreements to the parties. Only one party signs the retainer agreement. Appraiser then renders report which one party disputes. Can there be a professional negligence claim?
Lintz v Aretz 2018 NY Slip Op 30455(U) March 12, 2018 Supreme Court, New York…
Some Problems, But No Intent to Deceive
Judiciary Law §487 is an ancient part of the common law, so old that it was enacted merely 30 years after the Magna Carta. That’s old! Here, in Ehrenkranz v 58 MHR, LLC 2018 NY Slip Op 01902 Decided on March 21, 2018 Appellate Division, Second Department applied its version of JL 487 (which differs…
When It All Comes Together and The Statute of Limitations
We’ve discussed other statute of limitations cases this week, and Roubeni v Dechert, LLP 2018 NY Slip Op 01950 Decided on March 21, 2018
Appellate Division, Second Department is an excellent example of what is really the only way around the iron-clad rule that the statute of limitations in legal malpractice commences at the mistake…
No Jurisdiction, No Departures, No Case
Genet v Buzin 2018 NY Slip Op 01878 Decided on March 20, 2018 Appellate Division, First Department is an example of a pro-se legal malpractice case wiped off the board. In a short decision, which gives few clues, the AD affirmed in about the shortest way possible.
“Order, same court and Justice, entered January 20,…
The “Continuing Wrong” Doctrine and the Statute of Limitations
The statute of limitations, as we have commented recently, is a social policy which seeks to limit the backlog of potential claims now sitting in virtual warehouses around the nation. You’ve been harmed, and that harm is actionable. Society has decided that certainty of business and personal life requires that such claims be brought, or…
Continuous Representation in Professional Negligence Settings
The statute of limitations serves to freshen and re-freshen the litigation warehouse. Claims and potential claims are warehoused, and then sometimes brought out. Policy considerations require that there be limits on how long a claim can be stored. When the sue-by date arrives, the question of a statute of limitations must be decided, as in …
Mental Illness, Insanity and the Statute of Limitations
Reading legal malpractice cases is an exercise in human sadness and unfortunate circumstance. Okello v Schwartzapfel, P.C. 2018 NY Slip Op 30402(U) March 12, 2018 Supreme Court, New York County Docket Number: 154971/2017 Judge: Arlene P. Bluth is no exception. The case illustrates the intersection between mental illness, insanity and tolling of the statute of…