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 this case the estates loses a claim for fees because of bad service of process. Estate of Norman Perlman v Kelley 2019 NY Slip Op 06475 Decided on September 11, 2019 Appellate Division, Second Department goes on to catalog how and why the service was bad.
“The plaintiff commenced this action on December 31,…
In an ironic example of mistakes, Plaintiff’s legal malpractice case against an individual attorney is dismissed not simply for the failure to file an affidavit of service but for the failure to ask the court to issue an order permitting late service of the affidavit.
Zheleznyak v Gordon & Gordon, P.C. 2019 NY Slip Op…
Ripa v Petrosyants 2019 NY Slip Op 32638(U) August 15, 2019 Supreme Court, Kings County Docket Number: 510658/17 restates the age old principle that one may not successfully sue an attorney unless there was an attorney-client relationship, or something very, very close to it. This was a restaurant investment gone bad. Judge Leon Ruchelsman picks…
One familiar trope in legal malpractice cases is the workers’ compensation – personal injury situation in which a plaintiff is injured on the job, but may have claims against non-employers as well as against the employer. Schwenger v Weitz, Kleinick & Weitz, LLP 2019 NY Slip Op 2605(U) September 4, 2019 Supreme Court, New York…
Many a snow and ice case has been lost over the years, and often there are attorney mistakes that accompany the loss. Whether the mistake caused the loss is a legal malpractice question, and one which is illustrated in Blair v Loduca 2018 NY Slip Op 05744 [164 AD3d 637]
August 15, 2018 Appellate Division,…
Bridge View Tower, LLC v Law Offs. of Boris Nikhman, Esq. & Vladimir Nikhman, Esq. 2019 NY Slip Op 51425(U) Decided on September 4, 2019
Civil Court Of The City Of New York, New York County Kraus, J. is emblematic of what most defense attorneys think any legal malpractice case looks like…no focus, no proof,…
Lopez v Lozner & Mastropietro, P.C. 2018 NY Slip Op 08017 [166 AD3d 871] November 21, 2018 Appellate Division, Second Department is an example of how some judges just get it wrong in legal malpractice settings, and dismiss where there is an actual cause of action stated.
“On November 4, 2011, the plaintiff, a pedestrian,…
As is almost always true, plaintiffs are unsuccessful at a summary judgment motion in legal malpractice settings. The Court can almost always find questions of fact which still remain in the “but for” area even after a departure from good practice is poundingly demonstrated.
Eurotech Constr. Corp. v Fischetti & Pesce, LLP 2019 NY Slip…
We’ve not heard the phrase before, but are familiar with the situation. Plaintiff gets into financial trouble and looks to fix a mortgage with a modification, a refinance, or some other method. Things go bad from there. Ramirez v Donado Law Firm, P.C. 2019 NY Slip Op 01244 [169 AD3d 940] February 20, 2019 Appellate…
Strujan v Kaufman & Kahn, LLP 2019 NY Slip Op 00630 [168 AD3d 1114] January 30, 2019 Appellate Division, Second Department is the end of the line for this case, and going forward Plaintiff must ask permission to file papers.
“Since the defendants represented the plaintiff’s adversaries in a prior action, the causes of action…
