In New York legal malpractice litigation, the defendant attorney may not ask for a set off in the amount of the hypothetical contingent fee. That is, defendant attorney is sued for losing a personal injury action argues that the damages must be reduced by one-third, the amount plaintiff would have had to pay to an attorney
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.
A Truckfull of Marijuana and Legal Malpractice
Plaintiff was driving a truckfull of marijuana when he was stopped and arrested. He says in the legal malpractice complaint that he spent less than an hour with his attorney prior to pleading guilty. He believes that this was legal malpractice, and the criminal trial [appellate ?] court agreed with him to a certain extent. …
Sued Too Many Times for Legal Malpractice Insurance?
Some law firms are sued for malpractice, and some sued twice or thrice. Here is a story from the Poppe Law firm blog about an Augusta law firm that has been sued so many times, its first carrier refused to renew the policy of legal malpractice insurance, and the second carrier won’t settle a current…
3 Lessons from this Legal Malpractice Case
The recently decided DeLuca v. Goldberger provides several interesting lessons in legal malpractice. The first is that attorneys who take on cases and then tell the client shortly before the statute of limitations runs, or shortly before a case must be restored, or shortly before some other deadline fact a legal malpractice problem. Here plaintiff…
“The Strong Arm” Attorney and Legal Malpractice
This short news article is probably wrong on several counts of its report, but the story itself is compelling. Client goes to a personal injury attorney Frank "The Strong Arm" Azar with a car accident case and then the case is settled for $ 25,000. Did he do a good enough job? Must he "strong…
Does The Public Want [Need} to Know about Legal Malpractice?
In this article from Law.Com a question in Texas mirrors similar issues in California, Nevada and Ohio. In the recent past there have been surveys, bar association meetings, proposed legislation and other indicia of interest in either mandatory legal malpractice insurance or required insurance disclosure to clients. As of now, no rippling in New York…
West Virginia, Mandatory Disclosure of Legal Malpractice Insurance
This report from the West Virginia Record is an eye-opener on politics and judicial elections. The tip of the iceberg is an aside in which an attorney has been suspended for failing to disclose whether he has legal malpractice insurance. The story is mulit-facited, however:
"MORGANTOWN – E-mails in state Supreme Court candidate Bob Bastress’…
Termination For Cause in Legal Malpractice
Good cause for termination is not the same as malpractice. Attorney malpractice, the deviation from good and accepted practice, which proximately damaged the party, in which, but for the negligence of the attorney there would have been a different or better result is not the same as good cause for termination. Termination for cause…
Matrimonial Legal Malpractice
Suri Katebi, Plaintiff-Appellant, v Paul Fink, et al., Defendants-Respondents.
SUPREME COURT OF NEW YORK,
APPELLATE DIVISION, FIRST DEPARTMENT
2008 NY Slip Op 4141
May 1, 2008, Decided
May 1, 2008, Entered
Clients are often asked at an allocution, settling a matrimonial action whether they are satisfied with their attorney’s work. It is highly…
Here the Lawyers Get the Benefit of Client’s Release in Legal Malpractice
JOSEPH G. HUGAR AND LKC, LLC, PLAINTIFFS-APPELLANTS, v DAMON & MOREY LLP, CHRISTOPHER T. GREENE, ESQ., ANTHONY L. EUGENI, ESQ., AND ROBERT J. PORTIN, ESQ., DEFENDANTS-RESPONDENTS.
596 CA 07-02311
SUPREME COURT OF NEW YORK, APPELLATE DIVISION, FOURTH DEPARTMENT
2008 NY Slip Op 4167; 2008
May 2, 2008, Decided
May 2, 2008, Entered
When are attorneys…