Judiciary Law § 487 cases are very very hard to bring. In the First Department they are even harder to maintain. When such a case is brought pro-se, the chances of viability plummet. So it was with Rondeau v Bargman 2017 NY Slip Op 32256(U) October 19, 2017
Supreme Court, New York County Docket Number:
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.
Continuous Representation To Be Determined by Arbitrator
Arbitration clauses in professional malpractice settings are not absolute, but they can be very persuasive to Courts. When presented with defenses to an arbitration clause, or to other clauses contained in the agreement between client and professional, the Court may take up the issue and decide it, or it can send the issue to the…
Proximate Cause and the Accountant
Mistakes, mistakes, shoddy performance! This is what malpractice cases are all about. However, litigation over these issues is rarely simply about the mistake. It’s the surround that matters so much more. The “surround” ? What we mean by this is the more subtle issues such as proximate cause, professional strategy, etc. Vitale v Koenig 2017…
A Primer in Continuous Representation
For a well written discussion of the elements of continuous representation, we suggest that RJR Mech. Inc. v Ruvoldt 2017 NY Slip Op 31232(U) June 8, 2017 Supreme Court, New York County Docket Number: 158764/2015 Judge: Jeffrey K. Oing serves as a prime example.
” As in the first action, the. complaint in the second…
Vicarious Liability and Planning for Emergencies
A simple fact pattern. Customer comes to store, is offered valet parking. Customer gives car to valet driver, who proceeds to strike a pedestrian. Who may be responsible and how do the liabilities of the store, the valet service, the valet driver interact?
Berger v Rokeach 2017 NY Slip Op 27374 Decided on November 20,…
For Lack of An Expert, the Case is Lost
Professional negligence similar to legal malpractice deals with areas of specialized knowledge. When the term “specialized knowledge” is used, the trial lawyer thinks: “admissibility”, “lay juries” and “experts.” In Herman v Franke, Gottsegen, Cox Architects 2017 NY Slip Op 07980
Decided on November 15, 2017 Appellate Division, Second Department one side utilized an expert, the…
Notice and an Opportunity to be Heard in a Sanctions Case
Plaintiff sued under Judiciary Law § 487 and was promptly the subject of sanctions and dismissal. Supreme Court granted both, and an appeal ensued. In Liang v Wei Ji 2017 NY Slip Op 08361
Decided on November 29, 2017 Appellate Division, Second Department, the Court affirmed because plaintiff had previously been enjoined from starting any…
The Field Is Winnowed, and the Case Goes On
It takes a while to work through the events of Josephs v AACT Fast Collections Servs., Inc.
2017 NY Slip Op 08357 Decided on November 29, 2017 Appellate Division, Second Department and to determine whether it was a mistake not to oppose a motion for dismissal. Near the end of the decision we see…
A Legal Malpractice Case Blown Away
Just as the roof proved inadequate to the task, so the proofs on plaintiff’s case were inadequate to the claim in Petre v Alouidor & Assoc. 2017 NY Slip Op 51590(U) Decided on November 27, 2017 Appellate Term, First Department. It appears that there was no expert.
“The trial court correctly dismissed the action at…
The Appellate Term Says: Not So Quickly!
Weintraub v Petervary 2017 NY Slip Op 51595(U) Decided on November 16, 2017 Appellate Term, Second Department is an example of how lower courts over-determine cases in favor of the attorney and to the detriment of the client. Legal malpractice cases, we have argued in the past, are dismissed at a greater rate than in…