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.
A recent case Carl v. Cohen, Supreme Court, New York County, Justice Edmead 2009 NY Slip OP 30806(U), April 15, 2009 illustrates two distinct principals. The first is privilege and at issue communications. The second principal, to be discussed on Friday, is relation-back and the statute of limitations.
Plaintiff in this case was an employee at…
A NYC fact pattern in legal malpractice: Plaintiff, a MD wishes to buy a co-op for use as a physician’s office. She finds a prior doctor’s office and hires attorney and engineering company to do the deal. Plaintiff buys the unit only to find out that the certificate of occupancy is for residential use…
This recent appellate case McCluskey v Gabor & Gabor, 2009 NY Slip Op 02757 Decided on April 7, 2009 Appellate Division, Second Department illustrates the difference between malpractice at the trial level and at the appellate level.
At the trial level one must prove the usual :"a plaintiff must demonstrate that the attorney failed…
From theLaw Profession Blog we report on this Arizona Disciplinary Case in which the exitence of attorney malpractice insurance was published. The attorney was disciplined as we see in the order.
"An Arizona hearing officer has recommended the disbarment of an attorney for misconduct in several matters. The lawyer was no stranger to the bar…
Cruise Ship Season comes and goes, and even in poor economic times, the ships carry many people to their vacations. As in all events human, there will be accidents and injury. The very nature of cruise ships, their location and the mere fact that they travel on water, complicates the legal horizon. Nautical law is different…
Nature abhors a vacuum, they told us in high school and the law abhors a wrong without a remedy. One particular area of legal malpractice where this occurs is criminal defense, in which no legal malpractice action might be brought by a convicted defendant, no matter whether the attorney’s mistakes contributed, or caused the conviction.
Another…
"The best defense is a strong offense"…"Tyranny shall not go unopposed!" which of these two opposing story lines will succeed in a legal fee / legal malpractice case. Here is one example where the fee side wins out. Duane Morris LLP v Astor Holdings Inc. , 2009 NY Slip Op 02544
Decided on April 2…
Taking over a pro-se case can be dangerous, as an attorney in NJ has recently found out. In this story from Law.com recounts the attorney took over after a pro-se college professor started a employment discrimination law suit:
"A lawyer who prevailed in a Title VII suit three years ago has been engaged since then in an…
Judiciary Law sec. 487 is perhaps our oldest statute, certainly the oldest statute in existence concerning legal malpractice. Recently the Court of Appeals decided Amalfitano v. Rosenberg. Now we are seeing a resurgence of interest, and in this particular case a court reconsidering its earlier decision to dismiss a Judiciary Law 487 case based…
The Court of Appeals decided an interesting attorney fee sharing case today, in which the successful attorneys called their referring attorneys "unethical" and then promptly lost the case. Samuel v Druckman & Sinel, LLP 2009 NY Slip Op 02447 Decided on March 31, 2009
Court of Appeals Pigott, J. determined the following problem. …
