Mamoon v Dot Net Inc. 2016 NY Slip Op 00600 Decided on January 28, 2016 Appellate Division, First Department is a casually written yet decisive decision from the Appellate Division, which basically keeps the legal malpractice cause of action and jettisons everything else as inappropriate (civil conspiracy) or duplicitive. Note the short sentence about the
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.
What A Mess Follows a Withdrawn Affirmation
Klein v Rieff 2016 NY Slip Op 00482 Decided on January 27, 2016 Appellate Division, Second Department is a fascinating story, and could well serve as a bar exam all by itself. It deals with the owners of nursing homes and the fallout from their breakup. The gist of the story is the loser in…
Legal Malpractice Case Illustrates Many Unique Principles
Legal malpractice litigation is unique, and has a set of principles and doctrines that are applicable only when suing an attorney. Janker v Silver, Forrester & Lesser, P.C. 2016 NY Slip Op 00481 Decided on January 27, 2016 Appellate Division, Second Department is a primer for review.
“The plaintiff’s former husband commenced an action for…
This Case Decision Illustrates the Public Policy behind Limits to Judiciary Law 487
Bad cases make bad law is a mantra in the world of litigating attorneys. An otherwise vibrant doctrine may be undermined by decisions arising from less than optimal cases. One such example is a textbook example of why JL 487 claims are “disfavored” and applied so stringently.
Hersh v Weg 2015 NY Slip Op 30698(U) …
Judiciary Law 487 Claims Against a Bankrupt
Judiciary Law 487 claims are difficult. They are disfavored, as our discussions over the past three weeks has shown. Appellate Courts appear (but do not explicitly state) to require a higher standard of proof, and have used the word “clear” in their descriptions of the standard of JL 487 proofs, bringing to mind a “clear…
A Form Dismissal of a Judiciary Law 487 Claim
All too often, the Appellate Division affirms Supreme Court’s dismissal of a claim with a blanket statement of black-letter law. These dismissals, understandable under the unrelenting numbers of cases before the Second Department (for example) fail to inform litigants of what is a proper quanta of factual allegations and those which will fail the test. …
Two Distinctly Unrelated But Similar Themes
Two items caught our notice this morning, and though unrelated, sound a similar theme. Fraud on the Court in one and feigned issues of fact in the other compliment the idea of how the truth divining process happens in litigation. Somehow, even creakily, the process of cross-examination and discovery seem to work.
In Scheuer v. …
A Legal Malpractice Case Full of Errors
Reem Contr. v Altschul & Altschul 2016 NY Slip Op 30059(U) January 12, 2016 Supreme Court, New York County Docket Number: 104202/2011 Judge: Kelly O’Neill Levy is an example of the odd situation in which a legal malpractice case is a catalog of procedural errors. Defendants do not answer, then obtain an extension and then…
The First Department Explains Some Fundamentals in Judiciary Law 487
There have been lingering questions about procedural aspects of Judiciary Law 487 that have never been completely explained. One earlier question, answered in 2014 was the length of the statute of limitations, 3 years or 6 years. That question was answered by the Court of Appeals and is 6 years.
No Injury Is Stated and None Can Be Inferred
In a continuing review of last years Judiciary Law 487 cases, we see the Second Department refusing to consider a JL 487 case where the proximate damages are unclear, or cannot be reasonably inferred. Gumarova v Law Offs. of Paul A. Boronow, P.C. 2015 NY Slip Op 05155 [129 AD3d 911] June 17, 2015 …