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.
Here is the difference between legal malpractice and all other forms of litigation, distilled to a single sentence by Justice Kornreich in NextEra Energy, Inc. v Greenberg Traurig, LLP 2018 NY Slip Op 30638(U) April 11, 2018 Supreme Court, New York County Docket Number: 652484/2017
“Between August 2002 and December 2010, NextEra was represented in…
There are additional hurdles for legal malpractice cases not found in other spheres of the law. Rodriguez v Dean 2018 NY Slip Op 30642(U) April 10, 2018 Supreme Court, New York County Docket Number: 805280/16 Judge: Sherry Klein Heitler presents a new wrinkle we have not seen before. There are more than a few legal…
There have been only a few uses of the Grace v. Law rule that if a plaintiff has a viable (“likely to succeed”) appeal, it must be taken prior to commencing a legal malpractice case. Florists’ Mut. Ins. Co., Inc. v Behman Hambelton, LLP 2018 NY Slip Op 02556 Decided on April 12, 2018 Appellate…
Betz v Blatt 2018 NY Slip Op 02445 and 2444 Decided on April 11, 2018 Appellate Division, Second Department and are two extensively explained and well-reasoned decisions in the otherwise barren trust and estates legal malpractice world, in which a Judiciary Law § 487 claim is upheld. One reason for the relative lack of cases…
Bench and Bar read appellate decisions in order to understand how courts think, how they decide and for guidance in how to present cases. Panos v Eisen 2018 NY Slip Op 02480 Decided on April 11, 2018 Appellate Division, Second Department could have been instructive, could have explained why Plaintiff”s proofs were lacking, could have…
All too frequently a person is injured at work, retains an attorney, and a problem arises several years later. Either there is a “consent” problem with the WC carrier, or there is a total failure to file a WC claim. Sometimes, as in Encalada v McCarthy, Chachanover & Rosado, LLP 2018 NY Slip Op 02434 …
In Gad v Sherman 2018 NY Slip Op 02316 Decided on April 4, 2018 Appellate Division, Second Department we see the Second Department pass up an invitation to endorse a First Department concept that expressing “satisfaction” with the attorney’s work at an allocution settling a matrimonial action precludes a later legal malpractice case against the…
Moran Enters., Inc. v Hurst 2018 NY Slip Op 02321 Decided on April 4, 2018 Appellate Division, Second Department illustrates why secondary issues may lead to dismissal. Here, the failure to list a claim on a bankruptcy schedule along with the failure to pay franchise taxes doomed a variety of legal malpractice claims.
“The plaintiff…
Sometimes the First Department writes a long opinion, sometimes only a paragraph. Here, in Heth v Satterlee Stephens Burke & Burke LLP 2018 NY Slip Op 02307 Decided on April 3, 2018
Appellate Division, First Department the issues were distilled, the opinion was short.
“Plaintiff alleges that defendants, representing him pursuant to an engagement letter…
Sadly, there are a substantial number of legal malpractice cases brought by pro-se litigants. While legal malpractice cases suffer a disproportionately high rate of dismissal in all settings, in the pro-se area the dismissal rates are very high. Knobel v Wei Group, LLP 2018 NY Slip Op 02292
Decided on April 3, 2018 Appellate Division,…
