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.
Claims are often made for multi-million dollar losses, and often they amount to a dream. Here, in Red Zone LLC v Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP 2014 NY Slip Op 04570 Decided on June 19, 2014 Appellate Division, First Department the case ends in a verdict for $ 17.2 million.
Of note is the…
We’ve remarked in the past that there seems to be an artificially high standard for plaintiff in legal malpractice cases. On summary judgment we submit that the legal malpractice plaintiff has greater requirement to "disprove" the "but for" arguments of defendants than in any other sphere of law. As an example Lincoln Trust v Spaziano …
Attorney sues his former law firm. At the arbitration, no expert is presented to value the law firm. Arbitrators rule against the attorney. He then finds second law firm to "assist in obtaining relief." No relief is obtained, and the second law firm surreptitiously sets up a legal malpractice case against the "co-attorney." Is this…
Sometimes reading appellate decisions is enlightening, and sometimes it causes head-spin. McDonald v Edelman & Edelman, P.C. 2014 NY Slip Op 04560 Decided on June 19, 2014
Appellate Division, First Department is definitely a head-spinner. First, this is a re-write of the November 12, 2013 decision. A recall of that decision is understandable, since…
A world leader in the non-dairy segment of the frozen food industry and in non-dairy emulsions hires a world class law firm to file and prosecute patents for a "pourable dessert liquid product" (think: Mexican Cool Whip) which fails in both Mexico and Columbia. Is the law firm to blame? Yes and no.
Courts rarely enunciate the principal that all legal malpractice claims compare a hypothetical better outcome, assuming that the attorneys did no wrong, with the actual. If the complaint had been filed timely, I would have won the case and obtained a verdict. If a bank account had been discovered in the case I would have…
Riverhead: One scenario that repeatedly appears is that of an attorney, who was retained on a normal contingent fee agreement, suddenly awakes to the onset of trial and the need for an expert. The attorney also determines that expert require a fee, and sometimes turns to the client, in violation of the contingent fee agreement…
Causes of Action for Breach of Fiduciary Duty not dismissed…causes of action for breach of contract not dismissed. Is this a trend? Today in Cherry Hill Mkt. Corp. v Cozen O’Connor P.C.
2014 NY Slip Op 04248 Decided on June 12, 2014 appellate Division, First Department we see dismissal of the legal malpractice claim, but reversal…
In an ironic situation, two highly placed legal malpractice defense firms accuse each-other’s clients of legal malpractice, and seek to apportion blame between their clients in a case where it is clear that one or both of the clients committed legal malpractice. It’s abundantly clear that service of a notice to individual shareholders did not…
Plaintiff sues attorney over fees. Claim is that attorney failed to try to get client’s wife to pay attorney fees in a custody dispute. Attorney successfully defends legal malpractice case on the "but for" aspect. A question of overbilling, however, remains in the case on the theory of breach of contract.
"The plaintiff commenced this action…
