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.
Rather than try to boil this case down, we quote fromHadar v Pierce 2013 NY Slip Op 30185(U)
January 4, 2013 Sup Ct, New York County Docket Number: 652811/11 Judge: Eileen Bransten.
"This action arises from an underlying dispute between Eric Hadar and his father Richard Hadar. Eric Hadar has been a successful real…
To what extent did defendant attorneys participate in the negotiation and advice given to a doctor who had a condo along with a professional suite, and then rented the suite? Was co-defendant the attorney who gave all the advice and defendant merely one who attended the closing?
Plaintiff must always prove that departures from good and accepted practice by the defendant were a proximate cause of the injury. Note that there need be no proof that the departure was the proximate cause. In Arbor Realty Funding, LLC v Herrick, Feinstein LLP 2013 NY Slip Op 01216
Decided on February 26, 2013 …
Complaints might be compared to a precision rifled single shot or to a shotgun, in which an ever-widening pattern of scatter shot is fired. Complaints patterned on either might be successful, but Iwachiw v Bahr 2013 NY Slip Op 30283(U) January 11, 2013 Supreme Court, New York County
Docket Number: 401546/2011 Judge: Lucy Billings chose the shotgun…
So many of these cases start over a fee. Here, relatives try to push relatives out of a house (we guess it was bequeathed to both), and clients end up spending about $ 50,000 to avoid being put in the street. Then, it comes time to pay the attorneys. This leads to an attorney fee…
Not only did the defendants obtain dismissal, but the non-answering defendant obtained dismissal too. Unfortunately the 2d Department decision in Siwiec v Rawlins 2013 NY Slip Op 00903 Decided on February 13, 2013 Appellate Division, Second Department did not explain its reasoning. The most that can be gleaned from this slender record is "Here, the complaint…
Plaintiff loses in Supreme Court, and dismissal is affirmed in the Appellate Division in this legal malpractice case. Voutsas v Hochberg 2013 NY Slip Op 00803 Decided on February 7, 2013
Appellate Division, First Department discusses the limits of the fraud discovery rule, as well as continuous representation.
"The fraud and breach of contract…
Justice Ritholtz of Supreme Court, Queens County lays the issue out in the first sentence of the decision in 150 Centreville, LLC v Lin Assoc. Architects, PC 2013 NY Slip Op 23038 Decided on February 6, 2013 Supreme Court, Queens County Ritholtz, J. "The questions involved in this action are whether there should be any…
It’s medical malpractice which is something we don’t usually write about, but Justice Schlesinger’s opinion in this medical malpractice summary judgment opinion is well worth reading. Balzola v Giese 2013 NY Slip Op 30324(U) February 5, 2013 Supreme Court, New York County Docket Number: 114205/2009 Judge: Alice Schlesinger slowly and thoroughly works it way through…
Hsu v Liu & Shields LLP 2013 NY Slip Op 30291(U) February 7, 2013 Sup Ct, New York County
Docket Number: 400781/12 Judge: Richard F. Braun is the story of how one set of plaintiffs lost this case twice, in fact three times. Plaintiff is pro-se, and complains that he and other plaintiffs were the…
