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.
Third-party practice between professionals is a major part of legal malpractice litigation. Here, the defendant attorneys point the finger at accountants and argue that mistakes in the tax filings caused the damage of which they are accused.
Rubin v Duncan 2018 NY Slip Op 32934(U) November 16, 2018 Supreme Court, New York County Docket Number:…
Brooklyn Med. Eye Assoc., LLC. v Rivkin Radler LLP,
.2018 NY Slip Op 32913(U) November 13, 2018 Supreme Court, Kings County Docket Number: 505978/18 Judge: Leon Ruchelsman is an example of what happens when a doctor to doctor business sale goes wrong.
“At the end of 2012 an entity called Craniofacial Surgery P.C., owned by…
Lopez v Lozner & Mastropietro, P.C. 2018 NY Slip Op 08017 Decided on November 21, 2018 Appellate Division, Second Department is a text-book lesson in how to calculate the legal malpractice statute of limitations in a motor-vehicle case where no case was started. It is three years from the date of the motor-vehicle accident plus…
In a fight of first impression, Defendant is battling to keep plaintiff from taking over defendant’s potential legal malpractice case against his attorney. In this case, it seems that the Defendant and the attorney are childhood friends, and that Defendant would do almost anything (except pay plaintive) to protect the attorney. What loyalty!
Borges v …
Judge Ruchelsman spends time peeling back the onion layers in Woodcock v Birnbaum
2018 NY Slip Op 32841(U) November 7, 2018 Supreme Court, Kings County Docket Number: 507014/18 to come to the decision on whether there was a violation of Judiciary Law § 487. Eventually, he finds that arguments were insufficient, but not deceitful.
“During…
In Greenstreet of N.Y., Inc. v Davis 2018 NY Slip Op 07837 Decided on November 15, 2018
Appellate Division, First Department the distinction is meaningless. This construction/building code case raises the question of privity and near privity.
“Whether characterized as professional malpractice or negligent misrepresentation, the central issue is whether plaintiff has sufficiently alleged a…
Equitable estoppel is (of course) an equitable defense to the statute of limitations. It is successfully invoked in the legal malpractice field when the target attorney says, for example, “don’t worry about that pesky statute of limitations, we’ll keep talking about settlement for a while.” What happens when plaintiff seeks to apply it to a…
Personal injury law firms face the economic facts of personal injury litigation, including the necessity of having a full shelf of cases to pursue. PI litigation takes time and what often happens is that the squeaky wheel case keeps the lawyer from working the less prominent case. Statutes of limitation keep on running along, however,…
Weinberg v Kaminsky 2018 NY Slip Op 07652 Decided on November 13, 2018
Appellate Division, First Department is an example of the low-success attempt to recast a previously dismissed legal malpractice cause of action in another form. Here, the Court simply wiped out the second attempt.
“Order, Supreme Court, New York County (Manuel Mendez, J.),…
A slight exaggeration, but in 195 Hawthorne Partners, LLC. v Thompson 2018 NY Slip Op 32804(U) October 30, 2018 Supreme Court, Kings County Docket Number: 506136/18
Judge: Leon Ruchelsman there are pages and pages of discussion of a back-and-forth transfer, deeds, mortgages, foreclosures of what must be a valuable property. The attorneys are third-partied…
