Retainer agreements or letters of engagement are required in New York, and there is a large body of law concerning attorney fees and the necessity of retainer agreements. On a different dimension, the question of what work an attorney has agreed to perform, and the limits of that attorney’s liability may well be determined by
Andrew Lavoott Bluestone
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.
An Unusual Real Estate Legal Malpractice Case
One might not expect a legal malpractice case such as this to take place in Brooklyn. It would be far more plausible in a small upstate hamlet, where everyone knows everyone else, and there are strongly intersecting lines of business and social life. But, even here in the big city, attorneys are fiduciaries and must…
Privilege, At Issue Communications and Legal Malpractice
Legal Malpractice cases frequently involve a series of attorneys, each of whom comments or gives advice concerning the acts of a predecessor. When will these communications be protected and when will the protection be waived ? A simple answer would be that all communications are protected, forever. The wise commentator amongst us knows that some…
Roadmap to a Legal Malpractice Law Suit, Under Seal
Taken verbatim from the New York Law Journal by Andrew Longstreth
"McDermott Will Settles Malpractice Claim
McDermott, Will & Emery has settled a malpractice claim brought by the litigation trustee in the bankruptcy of Saint Vincent’s Catholic Medical Centers of New York, according to court records. News of the settlement, which is filed under…
Losing Custody and Losing a Malpractice Case
In this Albany County case, via the Third Department, Bixby v Somerville ;2009 NY Slip Op 03821
Decided on May 14, 2009 we see the unraveling of a marriage, and the eventual custody dispute, now played out in legal malpractice. Father fights with mother over sole custody, ending in a shared custody decision, later modified by…
Choice of Law in Legal Malpractice Case
Here is a most unusual case. Legal Malpractice case in State Court follows personal injury case in Federal Court and the State Court Judge effectively second guesses the Federal Court judge in whether plaintiff was subject to North Carolina law or that of another state.
DiTondo v Meagher ;2009 NY Slip Op 29178 ;Decided on…
Sub-Prime Loans and Legal Malpractice
We have been following this story of the intersection of legal malractice and the sub-prime morrgage crisis. Today, Susan Beck in the New York Law Journal reports that Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft faces a continued legal malpractice case for their work in servicing and securing loans worth $1.8 billion. Cadwalader’s motion to dismiss was denied…
Summary Judgment in Broadway Legal Malpractice Case
Broadway and Barry Manilow…it seemed destined for success, but lack of investors doomed the production of Harmony. The case revolved around alleged wrong advice on the date of the second option payment, which plaintiff has argued could have been made with the correct date advice.
The option lapsed, an arbitration with Manilow and others…
A Pair of Cases: Are These Legal Malpractice?
This morning’s Law Journal revealed a pair of cases in which just about the same thing happened. Attorneys acted badly, and the client suffers. Clients depend on their attorneys, and can do just about nothing without the attorney acting as intermediary. Clients, too, suffer when their attorney is punished by the court.
In Pacheco v …
RCM Technologies and Buchanan Ingersoll Legal Malpractice Case
Henry Gottlieb at Law.Com reports this $10.6 million Legal Malpractice settlement between Buchanan Ingersoll and RCM Technologies over a stock registration agreement, today. Here is the news article:
" A lawyer and two Philadelphia firms have agreed to pay $10.6 million to settle a claim that they botched work on a New Jersey company’s stock transactions…