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.
Legal malpractice insurance, which one might think is a subject reserved solely for the attorney, is truly a subject of interest to the plaintiff as well. No insurance may lead to no settlement. Hence…
Here the insurance company would like to disclaim on the basis that the attorney was actually doing business as an education…
Yesterday, we started a discussion of Randazzo v Nelson 2015 NY Slip Op 04299 Decided on May 20, 2015 Appellate Division, Second Department which arose from the sale of a deli in Staten Island. Deli’s make retail sales, and buyer’s attorney must know that there can be an audit by the NYS Tax Department of…
When a business that makes sales to the public, and collects sales tax is sold, the buyer may become liable for unpaid sales taxes of the seller. There is a well-understood process by which the buyer can immunize himself. Really, all it takes is following the rules. Unfortunately, in Randazzo v Nelson 2015 NY Slip…
Commercial client hires a law firm to litigate its claims against a municipality. The law firm fails to file a Notice of Claim and similarly fails to file a motion seeking leave to file a late notice of claim. The worst is yet to come. The law firm has allowed its malpractice insurance to lapse,…
Recently we told a mother that she had little likelihood of success in suing her son’s criminal defense attorney. Questions of privity aside, the bar is extraordinarily high in trying to sue after a conviction. Social policy and the Courts have set up a situation in which the lack of “actual innocence” acts as a…
Facebook is the Mount Everest of Intellectual Property litigation quests. It’s just so big! When the lawfirms in this case came across a potential client who just might own half of Facebook, all caution was forgotten. Sure, the plaintiff resided in the poorest county in New York, where there are more cows then people. Sure,…
In this version of Dr. v. Lawyer, it’s a knock-out to the lawyer. Doctor joins a medical practice and comes under scrutiny for his advocacy of “pranic healing.” “Pranic Healing® is a highly evolved and tested system of energy medicine developed by GrandMaster Choa Kok Sui that utilizes prana to balance, harmonize and…
It’s been 7 years since Bernie Madoff was arrested, yet his craftwork still is filtering through the legal malpractice world. In Delollis v Archer 2015 NY Slip Op 04084 Decided on May 13, 2015 Appellate Division, Second Department we see an unsuccessful claim by benefit funds of the carpenters’ unions against their attorneys, whom they…
Judiciary Law § 487 claims are unique, and arise from the oldest statute in Angol-American jurisprudence. Often misused, the statute is infrequently applied or upheld against its target. Hersh v Weg 2015 NY Slip Op 30698(U) April 27, 2015 Supreme Court, New York County Docket Number: 104360/2011 Judge: Jeffrey K. Oing is a prime example.…
This Fourth Department Case has been up and down on appeal and now heads back to the trial court. Rich Prods. Corp. v Kenyon & Kenyon, LLP 2015 NY Slip Op 04012 Decided on May 8, 2015 Appellate Division, Fourth Department is the story of an invention by a huge multi-national food company (think Coffee-Rich). …
