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.
Sometimes it takes a federal court decision to clarify the current state of the law in a discrete area.
Judge Crotty neatly sets forth the application of Judiciary…
We’re having a little trouble understanding what went wrong in the transaction, and why the legal malpractice case was brought. It looks like the sub-sub-lessor bought the sub-lessor’s stock and then encountered trouble with the landlord. However, that theory emerged only on appeal. So, in Salyamov v Lyhovsky 2017 NY Slip Op 00929 Decided on…
Oral argument sometimes drifts to the “analogy” stage, where an example must be used in order to show the simplest type of legal malpractice case. It is often the particular fact pattern found in Detoni v McMinkens 2017 NY Slip Op 01334 Decided on February 22, 2017 Appellate Division, Second Department.
“On November 19, 2005,…
Superior Tech. Solutions, Inc. v Rozenholc 2017 NY Slip Op 01136 Decided on February 10, 2017 Appellate Division, First Department is an example of trying anything to fix a deadly problem. When this happens, anyone in the general vicinity becomes a target.
From what we can glean, longtime tenant gets into a problem with the…
Plattsburgh New York is a city far away from most other places in NY. It is at the extreme upper right corner of New York, on Lake Champlain and at the Canadian border. Its so far away from everything else that the story in Plattsburgh Hous. Auth. v Cantwell 2017 NY Slip Op 50184(U) Decided…
Alphas v Smith 2017 NY Slip Op 01277 Decided on February 16, 2017 Appellate Division, First Department packs a semester’s worth of lecture into one short case.
Lesson 1: Privity in a Small Corporate Setting. “In opposition to defendants’ motion, plaintiff’s counsel submitted an affirmation citing Good Old Days Tavern v Zwirn (259 AD2d 300…
The New York Law Journal reported a “drastic sanction” against a medical malpractice defense firm today in Lucas v Stam 2017 NY Slip Op 01190 Decided on February 15, 2017 Appellate Division, Second Department.
“This medical malpractice action arises from ophthalmological surgery performed on September 5, 2007, on the plaintiff’s decedent by the defendant William…
Jury verdicts in the Legal Malpractice field are rare. Most cases are settled, and the balance are disposed of in motion practice. We are proud to share a New York Law Journal news article with you about this Legal Malpractice Jury Verdict from Supreme Court, Westchester County.
“A jury awarded nearly $400,000 to a Westchester…
Judiciary Law § 487 cases that survive appeal are rare; more so when it is against opposing counsel. Here, in Kimbrook Rte. 31, L.L.C. v Bass 2017 NY Slip Op 01083 Decided on February 10, 2017 the Appellate Division, Fourth Department states two principles of JL § 487: no need to bring the claim in…
Immigration and travel bans are the news this week, and Trapp-White v Fountain
2017 NY Slip Op 00948 Decided on February 7, 2017 Appellate Division, First Department illustrates that what would normally be damages in the real world are simply waived away in the legal malpractice world. Emotional distress? Non-pecuniary loss? Not in this world!…
