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.
Victoria Kremen suffered unnecessary bilateral mastectomomy, and then legal malpractice, and then bankruptcy, Law.com reports:
"A New York state judge has permitted a legal malpractice suit to proceed against plaintiffs lawyers who allegedly failed to seek a bankruptcy extension for their client, causing her medical malpractice case to be thrown out as untimely.
The article…
This Appellate Division Case points up how the court treats just one too many mistakes. Default, followed by failure to oppose a motion followed by…. The court uses the phrase "pattern of willful default.
"To vacate the order dated February 18, 2005, entered upon the plaintiffs’ default in opposing the appellants’ motion pursuant to…
In a recent successful case, plaintiff was a large real estate management company. Plaintiff was involved in a 500 million dollar financing involving 3 NYC downtown buildings. The general counsel asked one of the multiple large firms whether "mortgage spreading" could be used to avoid payment of new mortgage tax. When told "no", the financing…
In this NJ case, [which the NJLJ calls "Bad Bedside Manner"], client has car accident. We’ll call him driver 1. Relative of driver 2 comes to hospital room and gets hired as attorney, He doesn’t tell driver 1 that he is related to Driver 2.
Here is the rest of the case.
SUPERIOR COURT OF…
Interview a represented client? Wrong! or perhaps Sometimes Wrong! or perhaps something else. Scott Greenfield writes about this evolving question today in his Simple Justice blog. Making waves in criminal law, testing the limits. The Tom Liotti story.
From today’s NYLJ by Anthony Lin: Attorney loses case on summary judgment, and tells client that he is not obliged to handle appeal. Client, chemical company, hires Nathan Dershowitz to handle appeal, which he does. At appellate level, case settles for $ 250,000.
Client pays Dershowitz a contingent fee, and original attorney sues client…
Anthony Davis, writing in the New York Law Journal [subscription] writes of the recent appellate decision concerning the absence of an engagement letter:
"• Failing to Provide an Engagement Letter. In Rubenstein v. Ganea, No. 24483/04, 2007 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 4267 (2d Dept. April 3, 2007), concerning an engagement letter as required by…
Here is an article from the NYLJ [subscription]:
"High-low agreements in trials for civil damages constitute settlements and should be enforced as such, an appeals court in Brooklyn has ruled in a case of first impression.
A unanimous panel of the Appellate Division, Second Department, ruling in Cunha v. Shapiro, 2006-07880, further concluded that a…
This week we have a raft of Texas Cases Here attorney was appointed to represent convict father in a parental rights termination case. Reading the facts, we believe that the court would have terminated the convict’s rights anyway, but it was really unhappy about the representation.
"In its opinion, the Court of Appeals noted…
While diversity of citizenship may be an appropriate base for jurisdiction, 42 USC 1983 is not, at least in Texas There, the attorney is not a state actor:
"In Combs v. City of Dallas, 3:06-CV-0074-P, 2006 U.S. Dist. Lexis 92445 (N.D. Tex. 2006), the client sought to sue the attorneys who represented him during…
