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.
Delay in obtaining adverse evidence and overbilling are both claimed in Ostrolenk Faber LLP v Sakar Intl., Inc. 2019 NY Slip Op 31303(U) April 23, 2019 Supreme Court, New York County
Docket Number: 657134/17 Judge: Melissa A. Crane. Only one of the claims works in a legal malpractice setting. It is not overbilling.
Plaintiff Ostrolenk…
What could be more New York than a case about real estate and parking? Here, the problem was construction of two homes, each of which required off-street parking. The seller set up a situation in which both houses had the parking, but it all got screwed up.
Muco v Sadiku 2019 NY Slip Op 50709(U) …
A real estate deal gone wrong…what could be more New York than that? In our world, only a legal malpractice claim after the deal is more relevant.
83 Willow, LLC v Apollo 2019 NY Slip Op 31203(U) May 2, 2019 Supreme Court, New York County Docket Number: 151266/2015 Judge: Barbara Jaffe is the story of…
In an artificial social policy sort of way, lawyers protect lawyers. Although legal malpractice is a tort (maybe), there is still a requirement of privity. Remembering back to law school and the progression in products liability from a strict requirement of privity for a recovery from the manufacturer to strict liability, we wonder if the…
In legal settings, a recurrent theme is how some litigants move from a successful position to a losing position, often by overplaying their hands. Here, wife obtained physical custody of the child, which seemed to be an important outcome for her, only to end up loosing custody and owing six-figure legal fees to the husband. …
One hires an attorney to handle a case and expects that the attorney will handle the entire case at a level of good practice to which a competent attorney should adhere. No? Well not necessarily, as Attallah v Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy, LLP 2019 NY Slip Op 00583 [168 AD3d 1026] January 30, 2019 …
It is rare that Courts leave legal malpractice counterclaims in a case which starts out as an attorney fee claim; it is more rare that a late amended claim is permitted. However, in Davidoff Hutcher & Citron LLP v Parada 2019 NY Slip Op 31121(U) April 22, 2019 Supreme Court, New York County Docket Number:…
Continuous representation was once determined almost solely by the date of transfer of representation. Either a consent to change attorney or a court order determined the last day of representation and hence the end of continuous representation. Then came Aaron v. Roemer which held that communications showing a total breakdown of the attorney-client relationship marked…
Building is being sued by NYC for a public nuisance. While the case is being litigated, building owner rents the storefront to a club. Operating a club seems to be part of the public nuisance. Did the landlord know that renting it out (again?) to a club was a no-no? Was the economic incentive too…
In Mamoon v Dot Net Inc. 2019 NY Slip Op 31053(U) April 5, 2019 Supreme Court, New York County Docket Number: 652902/2013, Judge Lucy Billings describes the intersection of privity and near privity in an accounting malpractice setting.
“Since accountants owe no duty to the public at large, “privity,” a contractual relationship or similar connection…
