It is often and disparagingly said that legal malpractice cases exist solely to get out of obligations to pay attorney fees. Sometimes that appears to be true. Popkin v Kopoulos Decided on April 22, 2016 District Court Of Nassau County, First District Fairgrieve, J. is the story of an attorney who prepared a retainer agreement
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.
Vague Allegations of Damages Fail for Plaintiff
Plaintiff pled an adequate cause of action for himself, but could not plead adequately for his corporation. This outcome is generally the opposite of what one might expect in a legal malpractice case in which the individual is often not in privity with the attorney while the corporation is. Brion v Moreira 2016 NY Slip…
Professional Malpractice is For Professionals
Vista Food Exch., Inc. v BenefitMall 2016 NY Slip Op 02923 Decided on April 14, 2016 Appellate Division, First Department is an example of the tendency to apply a winning template to almost any situation. The AD found the template inapplicable in this setting.
“Plaintiff alleges that it relied on defendants’ advice in outsourcing its…
Account Stated is a Very Strong Doctrine
A bill is sent, and a partial payment is made. More bills are sent, and the client just stops paying. The case does not go well, and there is a dispute between client and attorney. When the attorney sues for fees, what will be the outcome?
More often than not, the account stated principle comes…
Couldn’t Sue the City, Couldn’t sue the Employer, No Malpractice
You work for a landscaping company, and are working on a big job at Van Cortlandt Park. You fall off a machine and get hurt. You apply for Workers’ Compensation benefits, and they are paid. Some months later you are told that you need an attorney. You hire the attorney and he works on the…
No One Gets Summary Judgment Here
Client is a big-time hedge fund earner, getting $5 and $6 million in bonuses over the years. Suddently, the bottom falls out, and he is offered severeness of only $ 1.6 million. He consults with defendants who tell him that they can help. However, defendants divert from the contractually set-up appeal procedure and plaintiff ends…
Clearing the Brush Away from the Statute of Limitations in an Accounting Case
Weight v Day 2015 NY Slip Op 09093 [134 AD3d 806] December 9, 2015 Appellate Division, Second Department is an accounting malpractice case with implications for the legal malpractice field. The statute of limitations begins to run, the Second Department tells us, when there is a verifiable and concrete end to the representation. The basics…
The Retainer Agreement and Legal Malpractice Litigation
Sure, there is a requirement that attorneys provide a retainer agreement or a letter setting forth the work to be performed and the costs. However, the Appellate Division has ruled that an attorney can collect fees even in the absence of a retainer agreement in Seth Rubenstein v. Ganea. So, what does it matter…
Summary Judgment Denied in a Short Affirmance
Sometimes the Appellate Division will opine and give its full reasoning, sometimes not. In Soubbotin v Joseph Potashnik & Assoc., PLLC 2016 NY Slip Op 02800 Decided on April 13, 2016 Appellate Division, Second Department the AD merely said that an argument put forward by the attorneys did not even make it to the prima…
It was the Court, Not the Attorney
Bad result suggests that a bad choice was made by the attorneys. The bad result/choice suggests that a legal malpractice case might be indicated. This is fair reasoning, but Courts often fail to join in the analysis, and point to a different cause of the bad result. Put another way, lots of legal malpractice cases…