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.
Here is a story which has happened all too often in the past 20 years.
“The plaintiff and the defendant, an attorney licensed in New York, met in or about 2001, when the plaintiff sought the defendant’s legal representation. The parties established a business relationship, which later evolved into a friendship. In 2007, upon the…
Some of the largest law firms in New York are the personal injury giants Jacoby & Meyers LLP and Finkelstein & Partners. All across upstate New York, wherever there are cars and personal injuries, you’ll find their offices. One of the institutional problems of the personal injury world is the expense of litigation. Smaller firms…
Outgoing Supreme Court Justice Milton Tingling gave short shrift to Plaintiff’s argument that Defense counsel had committed a violation of Judiciary Law § 487. The judge let plaintiff know that enough was enough on this “perjury” thing. Anyway, read it in Manhattan Telecom. Corp. v Jackson 2014 NY Slip Op 32053(U) February 24, 2014 Sup…
Plaintiff is a victim of a rear-end collision. The case ends up with a victory for plaintiff, but he sues his attorneys on the theory that they waited too long to move for summary judgment. Plaintiff alleges that he lost 6 years of interest. By his calculation he lost 54% of the value of the…
The Second Department rarely reverses Supreme Court’s grant of Summary Judgment to the attorneys in a legal malpractice case, but Smith v Kaplan Belsky Ross Bartell, LLP 2015 NY Slip Op 02108 Decided on March 18, 2015 Appellate Division, Second Department is one example.
“The plaintiffs were former executives of Odyssey Pictures Corporation (hereinafter Odyssey)…
Client hires attorney to make sure that a large loan is handled correctly and that the loan transaction would be legal, valid, binding, and enforceable. The loan became noncollectable. When the motions for summary judgment were filed, Supreme Court granted summary judgment to Plaintiff and denied summary judgment to defendants. The Appellate Division disagreed.
Quantum …
Fidelity Natl. Tit. Ins. Co. v Smith Buss & Jacobs, LLP 2015 NY Slip Op 02058 Decided on March 17, 2015
Appellate Division, First Department brings us the question of whether the law firm aided and abetted fraud, was negligent or simply made a big mistake. The Appellate Division left that question open on a…
Judiciary Law 487 is the attorney deceit law from Olde England. It allows for treble damages against an attorney who attempts or succeeds at deceit towards the Court or a party in litigation. How bad do you have to be to violate the statute?
Savitt v Greenberg Traurig, LLP 2015 NY Slip Op 02003 Decided…
Pari Delicto or unclean hands is a principal that the courts should not decide between wrongdoers. When may the court use this principal to wipe the board clean and allow no-one to bring a legal malpractice or a judiciary law 487 claim?
In Savitt v Greenberg Traurig, LLP 2015 NY Slip Op 02003 Decided on…
When does Continuous representation end? Sometimes a matter of days can be decisive. In Alizio v Ruskin Moscou Faltischek, P.C. 2015 NY Slip Op 01909 Decided on March 11, 2015 Appellate Division, Second Department it was the difference between April 20 and May 10. If continuous representation ended on April 20 the complaint was…
