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.
In what is this decade’s most unique Judiciary Law 487 claim, plaintiff in A.M.P. v Benjamin 2021 NY Slip Op 06589 Decided on November 24, 2021 Appellate Division, Third Department alleged that the deceit was coupled with gender discrimination and bias-related violence.
“As for plaintiff’s thirteenth cause of action, we agree with Supreme Court that …
Generally speaking, fraud claims in a legal malpractice setting are dismissed as duplicitive of the legal malpractice claim. For years, litigants have used the longer statute of limitations period for fraud as a way around a stale legal malpractice claim along with a discovery onset of the statute. In addition, fraud allows for greater damage…
I.M.P. Plumbing & Heating Corp. v Munzer & Saunders, LLP 2021 NY Slip Op 06544 Decided on November 23, 2021 Appellate Division, First Department stands for the unremarkable proposition that it is a departure from good practice if an attorney fails to answer a complaint and fails to seek additional time to answer the complaint. …
Allstar Elecs., Inc. v DeLuca 2020 NY Slip Op 07018 [188 AD3d 1121]
November 25, 2020 Appellate Division, Second Department demonstrates the danger of discovery failures. Here, the entire case was dismissed over the failure to give what the Court termed a “failure to provide court-ordered discovery.”
“”The nature and degree of the penalty to…
We believe that a legal malpractice case based upon a medical malpractice underlying case may be amongst the most technically and procedurally challenging litigations that exist. Proving a medical malpractice claim (as a plaintiff) is very difficult. It requires a strong understanding of medicine, massive record discovery, use of specialist medical experts, depositions of physicians,…
Louie’s Seafood Rest., LLC v Brown 2021 NY Slip Op 06167 Decided on November 10, 2021 Appellate Division, Second Department is a novel defense to a claim of deceit. Originally applicable to Anti-Trust litigation (where it excused certain litigation tactics), it is here applied (for the first time in state court legal malpractice claims) to…
The law firm represented itself. No appearance shows for Respondent. Appellant nevertheless loses in Napoli v Rubin 2021 NY Slip Op 06180
Decided on November 10, 2021 Appellate Division, Second Department. Sadly, the Appellate Division gives very little explanation of why.
“In March 2017, the plaintiff commenced this action to recover damages for legal malpractice,…
Sometimes at oral argument an Appellate Court already has a decision pretty much written and is giving the parties a chance to air their dispute. Sometimes, as apparently in Halwani v Boris Kogan & Assoc., P.C. 2021 NY Slip Op 06039 Decided on November 04, 2021 Appellate Division, First Department, oral argument really [really] makes…
In a familiar scenario, plaintiff retains attorneys to handle a transaction, and then somewhat later, hires the attorney to sue over the transaction. In Goodman v Weiss, Zarett, Brofman, Sonnenklar & Levy, P.C.
2021 NY Slip Op 05957 Decided on November 3, 2021 Appellate Division, Second Department the transaction was an employment contract and the…
Sometimes the AD thinks a case is pure speculation. In Lindenwood Vil., Section C, Coop. Corp. v Denenberg 2021 NY Slip Op 02463 [193 AD3d 593] April 22, 2021 Appellate Division, First Department they spent little time affirming.
“This legal malpractice action was properly dismissed. There is no basis other than speculation to support the…
