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.
Pryor Cashman is no stranger to legal malpractice cases. In today’s NYLJBrendan Pierson reports on one such case. The lawsuit, Fitzsimmons v. Pryor Cashman, 651360/10, was filed in August 2010.
"The plaintiffs are the trustees of three benefit funds for the Construction Workers Local 147, better known as the Sandhogs. The plaintiffs allege Pryor Cashman’s malpractice…
Plaintiff buys a co-op in 2002. She re-finances in 2008 using the same attorney. In 2010 she hires the same attorney to sell the unit and learns for the first time that the certificate of occupancy permits the unit to be used only as a professional office, not for residential use. Is an action for legal malpractice…
Once upon a time, the universally known and understood standard of whether a settlement (as against a dismissal or a verdict) of the underlying case affected the right to sue the attorney could be stated as "Was the settlement effectively compelled my mistakes of the attorney?" Now that bedrock principal seems to have been eroded…
Pro-se litigation in legal malpractice has a poor prognosis. There are many idiosyncratic aspects to legal malpractice cases, and Pouncy v Solotaroff 2012 NY Slip Op 07381 Decided on November 8, 2012 Appellate Division, First Department is one example. What is the line between reasonable and unreasonable strategic choice?
"The IAS court properly…
The field of potential legal malpractice damages is narrow, and the lines surrounding permissible damages has narrowed of late. Here, in Kodsi v Gee 2012 NY Slip Op 07417 Decided on November 8, 2012 Appellate Division, First Department we see the blanket principal that no non-pecuniary damages are permitted.
"Order, Supreme Court, New…
Statutes of limitation exist so that everyone may (someday) get on with their life. Humans need to have a known parameter after which all claims from the past are null and void. In legal malpractice, the statute of limitations is 3 years. The starting date of those three years is open to argument and analysis. In…
Except for that small class of errors which are apparent, open and obvious to a lay jury, an expert is needed for either side in a legal malpractice case. As an example, and although the case does not describe the expert’s testimony, its apparent that defense needed this expert to win the case. In SCG …
We’ve often written about privity and legal malpractice, and ran across this case illustrating the boundaries of privity in medical malpractice. The facts are ghastly, and the outcome, for plaintiff, is doubly hurtful.
In Fox v Marshall ; 2011 NY Slip Op 06214 ; Appellate Division, Second Department ; Sgroi, J., J. the question is…
There is nothing new in the case of Jack Hall Plumbing & Heating, Inc. v Duffy 2012 NY Slip Op 07249 Decided on November 1, 2012 Appellate Division, Third Department , merely a restatement of the long-standing and settled rule that expert opinion is required to show that there was / was not a departure…
In times of emergency, it might be a bit nerdish to worry about filing dates, but…
It’s obvious that the failure to file papers on time can be a rich source of legal malpractice litigation, but for the period of October 26, 2012 until further notice, there is little that might arise in this area…
