Borges v Placeres  2014 NY Slip Op 24053  Decided on March 5, 2014  Appellate Term, First Department  is rather an amazing story.  On one level it is the vindication of a man harmed, on another level it is the story of mistake piled on top of mistake, and in the end, our guess is that…

We read all the NY cases published that discuss legal malpractice, and once in a while we read a case that merely mentions the words "legal malpractice" in another setting. Varano v FORBA Holdings, LLC  2014 NY Slip Op 24056  Decided on March 4, 2014  Supreme Court, Onondaga County  Karalunas, J. is the most gruesome case…

95% of the cases we see are former plaintiff versus their attorney, and the balance are former defendant against their attorney.  Of those, only one or two are the insurance company versus their attorney after a settlement.  Here, in The Insurance Corp. of N.Y. v Smith, Mazure,
Director, Wilkens, Young & Yagerman, P.C.   2014…

Defense attorneys, when moving to dismiss, or even to denigrate Plaintiff’s case will tell the court (rather haughtily) that  "this is the 4th attorney for plaintiff" or something similar.  Their point is that the case must be worthless if there have been multiple attorneys for plaintiff.

Wadsworth Condos LLC v Dollinger Gonski & Grossman. …

Piro sued Russo, Karl, Widmaier & Cordano PLLC for legal malpractice.  Piro used attorney Rodriguez for that case.  At the same time Bonacasa obtained a default judgment against Piro. A guess is that both arose from the same issues and that Russo, Karl should have been defending Piro from Bonacasa.  So, in Russo, Karl, Widmaier & Cordano …

AQ Asset Mgt. LLC v Levine  2014 NY Slip Op 30489(U) February 27, 2014  Sup Ct, New York County  Docket Number: 652367/2010  Judge: Shirley Werner Kornreich is the story of a big deal gone bad, and how that failure devolves into looking for suspects.  Put another way, the clients are now looking to see…

Sometimes legal malpractice cases are an exercise in looking back.  Plaintiffs look backwards to what happened at the first trial, or what went wrong years ago.  Burbige v Siben & Ferber
2014 NY Slip Op 01426  Decided on March 5, 2014  Appellate Division, Second Department  is an example.  Plaintiff fell from a broken ladder at…

The Client comes in and tells you, "They didn’t know the case!  They didn’t prepare!  They lost the case!"  Is that enough for a good legal malpractice case?  A demonstrated lack of skill and a failure to prepare for litigation might seem proper fodder for a legal malpractice case, it’s not always enough.

In Chibcha …