Law firms traditionally wait three years and a day before suing for unpaid legal fees, and fall into the gap between the three year statute for a feared legal malpractice counterclaim and the six year statute for contract claims. So was the case in Lewis, Brisbois, Bisgaard & Smith, LLP v Law Firm of Howard
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.
An Ancient Statute is Put To A New Use
Judiciary Law § 487 is an ancient statute, emanating from long-ago England centuries before Brexit. In Charles Deng Acupuncture, P.C. v Titan Ins. Co. 2016 NY Slip Op 26211 Decided on June 30, 2016 Civil Court Of The City Of New York, Kings County Montelione, J. we see (what appears to us) a unique and…
Enough To Vacate…Enough to Dismiss?
Continuous representation can bring in a firm long after the case has begun. One example is an attorney who is retained to handle a case, and then takes the case to a new firm with him. The new firm, under proper circumstances, can be held liable to the client.
In Passeri v Tomlins 2016 NY…
Lots of Money Involved, But No Ascertainable Damages Shown
Plaintiff is married to a former movie star, and late in life she seeks to revoke an irrevocable trust. The money in the trust was hers prior to marriage, and in the transaction plaintiff nets $2 Million rather than $50,000. He sues nevertheless.
Gallet, Dreyer & Berkey, LLP v Basile 2016 NY Slip Op 05332…
Much Brush Cast Aside; Legal Malpractice Case Remains in Play
Board of Mgrs. of 325 Fifth Ave. Condominium v Continental Residential Holdings LLC 2016 NY Slip Op 31230(U) June 27, 2016 Supreme Court, New York County Docket Number: 154764/12 Judge: Kelly A. O’Neill Levy is a very dense luxury high rise construction case arising from a building on 5th Avenue in Manhattan. Justice O’Neill Levy…
Many Causes of Action, Mostly Time-Barred
Loans were given and mortgages taken. The mortgages were no properly recorded after closing. Some time passed, and the borrowers stopped paying. An easy solution, no? In this case, not an easy solution. All of the claims discussed in this appeal are time barred.
Yarbro v Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. 2016 NY Slip Op 05236 …
Your Lawyers are More or Less Free To Talk About You
In a dense (actually very dense) opinion, the First Department has determined that under certain circumstances, your attorneys are fee to discuss your case amongst themselves, and may do so in an air of confidentiality…they need not tell you what they discussed.
Stock v Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis LLP 2016 NY Slip Op 05247 …
Discovery, Adverse Inference and Sanctions in a Legal Malpractice Case
Playing around with big corporations in a legal malpractice setting requires huge gulps of discovery. One might expect 10,000+ emails, tons of testimony and millions of paper documents. What happens when plaintiff produces only one e-mail?
Arbor Realty Funding, LLC v Herrick, Feinstein LLP 2016 NY Slip Op 05065 Decided on June 28, 2016 Appellate…
There is Something Here, But Pruning Is In Order
Plaintiffs, especially those who do not regularly dabble in legal malpractice tend to think that more is better…more causes of action, more theories of the case, etc. Often these complaints have a nugget of meritorious fact, but they will be cleaned out by the court. Such is the case in Martin v Claude Castro & …
A Million Mistakes, But No Recovery
Only in legal malpractice will a court cite a number of mistakes made by the defendant, yet grant dismissal of a claim on the basis that Plaintiff did just fine, anyway. In almost every other area of the law, the same showing ends in denial of the motion and the beginning of discovery.