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 Zegelstein v The Roth Law Firm PLLC 2020 NY Slip Op 30581(U) February 28, 2020 Supreme Court, New York County Docket Number: 154224/2018 Judge: W. Franc Perry Plaintiff sued insurers and others in State and Federal Court where each of the cases was dismissed. The Legal Malpractice case is now dismissed as well,
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The underlying history of Oberlander v Wolf 2020 NY Slip Op 50263(U)
Decided on February 25, 2020 Supreme Court, Suffolk County St. George, J. goes way back to issues surrounding Felix Sater. If you recognize that name, you can see the depth of history associated with this case. The story of the case and present…
Any trial lawyer will be able to decipher the point of a difference between a pre-answer motion to dismiss and a motion for summary judgment. In Caso v Miranda Sambursky Slone Sklarin Verveniotis LLP 2020 NY Slip Op 01384 Decided on February 27, 2020 Appellate Division, First Department permitted dismissal on summary judgment in a…
Plaintiffs struck out across the board following being “frozen out” of merger negotiations. In Binn v Muchnick, Golieb & Golieb, P.C. 2020 NY Slip Op 01302 Decided on February 25, 2020 the Appellate Division, First Department found that the minority shareholders knew exactly what was coming their way, and nothing the attorneys did created…
Sultan v Zhu 2020 NY Slip Op 01285 Decided on February 25, 2020
Appellate Division, First Department is the story of a group of people living in a small condominium building. Some were celebrities, some not. Money disputes raged for years and years. Finally, they dissolved into legal malpractice disputes.
“Defendants were retained by plaintiff…
Farina v Katsandonis, P.C. 2020 NY Slip Op 30468(U) February 21, 2020
Supreme Court, New York County Docket Number: 154170/2019
Judge: David Benjamin Cohen presents a rarely discussed tolling provision of the statute of limitations. It is the “continuing wrong” toll. Continuous representation, as all know, tolls the statute of limitations while there remains an…
Rockland County: First, the house was lost to foreclosure. Then the case was lost to res judicata. Doomed from the beginning, the plaintiff was then deprived of the right to start another action or bring another motion. Eaddy v U.S. Bank N.A. 2020 NY Slip Op 01047 Decided on February 13, 2020 Appellate Division,…
Once in a while plaintiff seeks summary judgment in a legal malpractice setting. We anecdotally believe that Courts give greater scrutiny (i.e. a tougher standard) to plaintiff’s legal malpractice cases, and certainly at plaintiff’s seeking summary judgment. Here, in Eurotech Constr. Corp. v Fischetti & Pesce, LLP 2019 NY Slip Op 01366 [169 AD3d 597]…
The Second Department rarely reverses summary judgment in a legal malpractice setting. Of that subset of rare reversals, matrimonial legal malpractice is a very small portion. Nevertheless, in Lauder v Goldhamer
2020 NY Slip Op 01152 Decided on February 19, 2020 Appellate Division, Second Department appellant won all around.
“The plaintiff commenced this action alleging,…
Statutes of repose, statutes of limitation, procedural statutes of limitation, statutes which “merely suspend[s] the remedy.” Confused yet?
That question led to a dismissed legal malpractice case concerning whether California Code of Civil Procedure § 366.3 is a statute of limitation. The question came up in Matter of Cassini Decided on February 13, 2020 Appellate…
