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.
For those with any knowledge of the history of the statute of limitations in legal malpractice, there was once a time in which a three year s/l for tort and a six year s/l for contract existed. Under the Court of Appeals in Santulli it was permissible. In response the Legislature passed CPLR 214-6:
" an…
In Denenberg v Rosen ;2010 NY Slip Op 00081 ;Decided on January 7, 2010 ;Appellate Division, ;First Department ; Moskowitz, J. the question of when the relationship begins between client and attorney is discussed. Plaintiff, who was a knowledgeable investor, as a commodities trader, formed a retirement account that was ultimately disallowed by the…
We have written that legal malpractice cases arise from a large base of underlying matters. Here is a huge NY case that starts in Austria, travels east to Russia, and then is dismissed in New York. In this story from the NYLJ by Nate Raymond we see how an Austrian Bank which lost it all…
We’ve discussed the oft-found fact situation of how a fee determination by a bankruptcy court may block a later legal malpractice action. In Breslin Realty Dev. Corp. v Shaw ; 2010 NY Slip Op 00087 Decided on January 5, 2010; Appellate Division, Second Department; Chambers, J., J. the court writes persuasively about the concept:
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Criminal defendants have a well known and exacting path. Arrest, Indictment, Trial, Appeal, CPL 440 Motion (or its federal equivalent) habeas proceedings, and finally, they often turn to a legal malpractice action. In New York there is a strict prohibition against suing ones criminal defense attorney. Its sort of a quasi-immune situation. "New York law also…
Continuing the trend towards a combination of bankruptcy and legal malpractice, we note that bankruptcy follows, and rarely precedes legal malpractice situations, hence, we expect a swell of the intersection following the financial down-trends of the past year. Here, Tabner v Drake
2009 NY Slip Op 10006; Decided on December 31, 2009 ; Appellate Division, Third…
Plaintiff suffers a construction accident, and his attorneys wait too long to bring the action. He had a Labor Law 200.240, 241 and other claims, typical in a gravity-fall construction case. His attorney admit that they waited too long to commence the action, but was successful in dismissal of the Labor la 200 and 240…
In today’s NYLJ, Abraham B. Krieger writes a compelling article about "negligent referral ", and gives some history and out of state cases, along with a discussion of NY cases in the area. To backtrack, Mr. Krieger writes: "Recently, New York’s Appellate Divisions in the First, Second and Third departments, and a number of other…
In Dischiavi v Calli ;2009 NY Slip Op 09773 ;Decided on December 30, 2009 ;Appellate Division, Fourth Department we see a discussion of the effects of a bankruptcy filing on a legal malpractice claim. While the governing principal applies to any cause of action which a plaintiff had when bankruptcy was filed. it seems…
"The Cobbler’s Son had no shoes…" is an ancient way of saying that people attend to the needs of others, including clients, while ignoring the requirements closer to home. While the decision does not make this analogy, nor does it explicitly hinge the reasoning on the lack of an affidavit of plaintiff, we wonder whether…
