Andrew Lavoott Bluestone

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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.

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Legal malpractice has lately been examining securities transactions, bankruptcies and other phenomina of the downward trend in the economy.  Here, Law Com reports a new case against outside counsel for Brocade.

"Few plaintiffs have gone after companies’ outside lawyers in backdating lawsuits. But a new derivative case against directors and officers at Brocade Communications Systems…

In the high-stakes Estates and Trust world of Suffolk County [think East Hampton, not Patchogue], this case was reported last week.  Plaintiff  John Randolph Hearst [of the publishing family] sued his attorney on the theory that he and his former wife "fraudulently deprived him of title and use of more than $ 20 million in…

The law firm Clifford Chance was the latest participant in a swelling bankruptcy legal malpractice series of cases.  Anthony Lin of the NYLJ writes:

"Citing ‘Stoneridge,’ Judge Releases Law Firm From Securities Suit

A federal judge in Philadelphia has dropped Clifford Chance from a securities class action, citing the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in…

William Jacobs, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v Richard L. Kay, et al., Defendants-Respondents.
3460, 117332/05
SUPREME COURT OF NEW YORK, APPELLATE DIVISION, FIRST DEPARTMENT
2008 NY Slip Op 3710;
April 24, 2008, Decided
April 24, 2008, Entered

“After settling with the executrix their objections to the probate of their father’s will and trust, plaintiffs…

It’s the very rare case in which an expert is not needed in a legal malpractice case.  Here is a SDNY case in which the expert was necessary.  How could this attorney not have used an expert on a motion for summary judgment?

YAMIRA SANTIELI, Plaintiff, v. LAWRENCE M. LAPINE, Defendant.
3:05cv1712(WWE)
UNITED…

It appears certain that they gave bad tax shelter advice, but this plaintiff opted out of a successful class action only to see his own case dismissed,

EDWARD H. ARNOLD, Plaintiff, -against- KPMG LLP, and SIDLEY AUSTIN BROWN & WOOD LLP, Defendants.

05 Civ. 7349 (PAC)
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT…