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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DANIEL H. WILLIAMS, III, PLAINTIFF-RESPONDENT-APPELLANT, v DOUGLAS S. COPPOLA, MARK C. RODGERS, RODGERS & COPPOLA, LLP, DEFENDANTS-APPELLANTS-RESPONDENTS

SUPREME COURT OF NEW YORK, APPELLATE DIVISION, FOURTH DEPARTMENT
2005 NY Slip Op 8379

Cause of action for Fraud dismissed: “It is well settled that a cause of action for fraud does not arise where the only fraud…

Here is a report from the St. Claire Record about a legal malpractice case arising from a medical malpractice case, in which the defendant attorney was granted a change of venue and a new trial. For detalis, click here. The attorney, John Hopkins, was found to have deviated from good and accepted standards, but…

Liens in New York

A common law retaining lien entitles the outgoing attorney to retain all papers, securities, or money belonging to the client that came into the attorney’s possession in the course of representation, as security for payment of attorney’s fees. Arising from Judiciary Law 475, it is enforceable only by retention of the items themselves and is lost if the file or documents are no longer in the attorney’s possession.
Continue Reading Attorney Liens and Legal Malpractice in NY

Here are new legal malpractice decisions from 11/1/05 – 11/8/05:

1. Selletti v. Liotti: Plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment fails, AD affirms. “Plaintiff failed to submit evidence sufficient to establish, as a matter of law, that his conduct in prosecuting the federal action did not contribute to the imposition of the monetary sanction.”

2. Linder…