The parties in Kelleher v Adams 2017 NY Slip Op 01542 Decided on March 1, 2017 Appellate Division, Second Department have descended from philosophical discussions of the relationship of privity to contract and are fighting over who is permitted to represent the plaintiffs. Initially plaintiff’s attorney was disqualified. That changed on appeal.
“The defendants Jeffrey…
Molina v. Faust Goetz Schenker & Blee, (S.D.N.Y. 2017) illustrates the difficulty of assignments of legal malpractice cases. To be sure, assignment is permitted. “While legal malpractice claims may be assigned in New York (even to former litigation adversaries), nothing prevents a New York court from applying judicial estoppel to a case where all of…
Oral argument sometimes drifts to the “analogy” stage, where an example must be used in order to show the simplest type of legal malpractice case. It is often the particular fact pattern found in Detoni v McMinkens 2017 NY Slip Op 01334 Decided on February 22, 2017 Appellate Division, Second Department.
“On November 19, 2005,…
Superior Tech. Solutions, Inc. v Rozenholc 2017 NY Slip Op 01136 Decided on February 10, 2017 Appellate Division, First Department is an example of trying anything to fix a deadly problem. When this happens, anyone in the general vicinity becomes a target.
From what we can glean, longtime tenant gets into a problem with the…
Plattsburgh New York is a city far away from most other places in NY. It is at the extreme upper right corner of New York, on Lake Champlain and at the Canadian border. Its so far away from everything else that the story in Plattsburgh Hous. Auth. v Cantwell 2017 NY Slip Op 50184(U) Decided…
Alphas v Smith 2017 NY Slip Op 01277 Decided on February 16, 2017 Appellate Division, First Department packs a semester’s worth of lecture into one short case.
Lesson 1: Privity in a Small Corporate Setting. “In opposition to defendants’ motion, plaintiff’s counsel submitted an affirmation citing Good Old Days Tavern v Zwirn (259 AD2d 300…
Judiciary Law § 487 cases that survive appeal are rare; more so when it is against opposing counsel. Here, in Kimbrook Rte. 31, L.L.C. v Bass 2017 NY Slip Op 01083 Decided on February 10, 2017 the Appellate Division, Fourth Department states two principles of JL § 487: no need to bring the claim in…
Immigration and travel bans are the news this week, and Trapp-White v Fountain
2017 NY Slip Op 00948 Decided on February 7, 2017 Appellate Division, First Department illustrates that what would normally be damages in the real world are simply waived away in the legal malpractice world. Emotional distress? Non-pecuniary loss? Not in this world!…
In a puzzling case, Mohyi v Karen G. Brand, P.C. 2017 NY Slip Op 30185(U) January 27, 2017
Supreme Court, New York County Docket Number: 157823/15 Judge: Debra A. James disposed of a Judiciary Law § 487 claim, allowing the case to continue on other claims. In this electronic age of papers, and the…
A good legal malpractice case alleges that there were departures from good practice, which led to a bad result and that but for the departure from good practice there would have been a better result, with ascertainable damages. This is exactly what plaintiff in Hall v Schrader, Israely, Deluca & Waters, LLP 2017 NY Slip…
