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.
Supreme Court, Nassau County answered yes to the question. This tragic story pits brother against brother, with the innocent and the guilty tormented alike.
From the decision in Galasso, Langione, & Botter, LLP v Galasso 2016 NY Slip Op 51308(U)
Decided on September 19, 2016 Supreme Court, Nassau County DeStefano, J.:
“In 1993, the Firm…
OK…so you have a case with a good cause of action, perhaps a professional negligence case against an insurance broker who told you not to get flood insurance just before Superstorm Sandy. You timely bring the action only to be faced with a motion to dismiss on the basis of lack of jurisdiction as well…
Katz v Beil 2016 NY Slip Op 05977 Decided on September 14, 2016 Appellate Division, Second Department is an unusually long Appellate Division case which is unusually full of discussion of the various standards for motions, amendments and summary judgment. Read it as a primer on litigation standards.
1.”Contrary to the plaintiffs’ contention, the Supreme…
Professional negligence is not unlike legal malpractice…at least in the statute of limitations area. There are strict rules, and waiting too long is fatal. That’s what appeared to happen in Willis Ave Dev., LLC v Block 3400 Constr. Corp. 2016 NY Slip Op 05991 Decided on September 14, 2016 Appellate Division, Second Department. This mix…
Practitioners in the Judiciary Law § 487 field expect that they will always be facing an uphill battle. Facebook, Inc. v DLA Piper LLP (US) is an example of just how uphill it is. Supreme Court denied a motion to dismiss. The Appellate Division reversed and yesterday, the Court of Appeals refused to consider the…
Sadly, mistakes in a legal malpractice case seem to appear larger than in other areas of litigation. “The cobbler’s child is shoeless” is an older variant of the same issue. In Brown v Sanders
2016 NY Slip Op 05967 Decided on September 14, 2016 Appellate Division, Second Department we see a legal malpractice that was…
What happens when professionals take on a job, issue reports telling the client that all is well, only to have a governmental authority say that all is not well, and that the statutory reports understate a liability by $37 Million?
Leading Ins. Group Ins. Co., Ltd. v Friedman LLP 2016 NY Slip Op 30375(U) March…
Plattsburgh Hous. Auth. v Cantwell 2015 NY Slip Op 51832(U) [49 Misc 3d 1221(A)] Decided on September 23, 2015 Supreme Court, Clinton County Muller, J. is the story of an upstate city which had a housing authority. Once upon a time it hired an attorney to be its outside counsel. Then she was hired as…
A big construction of a supermarket is marred when the floor settles in an unsettling manner. The architect is sued, and motion practice ensues. It appears that there is a limitation of liability agreement which would severely undermine the case against the architect…or is there? This case highlights the necessity of using more words, rather…
Plaintiffs signed a consent agreement with the IRS agreeing to more than $ 1.5 Million as well as civil fraud and negligence penalties. That’s a lot of money. The attorneys who represented them continued on for a period of time and then wrapped up the IRS matter. Plaintiffs sued, and faced both a statute of…
