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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the New York Post is rarely a cite for us.  Here is a legal malpractice story from the Post about the subway hero and legal malpractice.  It can creep into almost any story.

"The Subway Superman who risked his life to save a fellow straphanger says he was taken for a ride and then thrown…

Here is a short article with this message:  dabble at your own risk of legal malpractice.

"Bankruptcy is widely recognized by lawyers who do not practice in that area regularly as such a specialized area that they do not “dabble” in it, as many general practitioners do in other areas. Example: a lot of “GP&rdquo…

The aphorism is that bad cases make bad law.  In this particular case, an attorney, now disbarred, has been holding on to case files, demanding payment.  So far, not so bad.  However, today, sheriffs were ordered in to look for the files, after contempt findings.

"A half-dozen sheriff’s deputies raided a disbarred attorney’s office last…

Keeping up to date is one way to avoid legal malpractice problems.  Here is a case from the Court of Appeals.  Notice the "immediately"

"We have recognized only two exceptions to prior written notice laws — "where the locality created the defect or hazard through an affirmative act of negligence and where a ‘special use’…

Here is a medical malpractice case in which a physician for the Workers Compensation board examines an injured worker, and tells him that a request for surgery will not be granted, and that the worker does not need surgery, only physical therapy.  Even though the examining physician is not plaintiff’s doctor, he is denied summary…

This case illustrates the problem of being ready for trial.  The case was scheduled months ahead, and presumably the expert was known at the time of trial.  However, the expert could not be coaxed into the courtroom.  Result?  Case dismised on failure to prosecute grounds.  AD affirms, but on failure to demonstrate prima facie case. …