Attorneys skip from firm to firm, and take cases with them.  Some cases hold that the former law firm remains on the hook even though the attorney left.  Rosenbaum v Sheresky Aronson Mayefsky & Sloan, LLP   2012 NY Slip Op 07651   Decided on November 14, 2012   Appellate Division, Second Department does not.  While…

Pryor Cashman is no stranger to legal malpractice cases. In today’s NYLJBrendan Pierson reports on one such case.  The lawsuit, Fitzsimmons v. Pryor Cashman, 651360/10, was filed in August 2010.

"The plaintiffs are the trustees of three benefit funds for the Construction Workers Local 147, better known as the Sandhogs. The plaintiffs allege Pryor Cashman’s malpractice…

Plaintiff buys a co-op in 2002.  She re-finances in 2008 using the same attorney.  In 2010 she hires the same attorney to sell the unit and  learns for the first time that the certificate of occupancy permits the unit to be used only as a professional office, not for residential use.  Is an action for legal malpractice…

Once upon a time, the universally known and understood standard of whether a settlement (as against a dismissal or a verdict) of the underlying case affected the right to sue the attorney could be stated as "Was the settlement effectively compelled my mistakes of the attorney?"  Now that bedrock principal seems to have been eroded…

Pro-se litigation in legal malpractice has a poor prognosis.  There are many idiosyncratic aspects to legal malpractice cases, and Pouncy v Solotaroff    2012 NY Slip Op 07381  Decided on November 8, 2012   Appellate Division, First Department is one example.  What is the line between reasonable and unreasonable strategic choice?
 

"The IAS court properly…

The field of potential legal malpractice damages is narrow, and the lines surrounding permissible damages has narrowed of late.  Here, in Kodsi v Gee   2012 NY Slip Op 07417   Decided on November 8, 2012   Appellate Division, First Department  we see the blanket principal that no non-pecuniary damages are permitted.
 

"Order, Supreme Court, New…

Statutes of limitation exist so that everyone may (someday) get on with their life.  Humans need to have a known parameter after which all claims from the past are null and void.  In legal malpractice, the statute of limitations is 3 years. The starting date of those three years is open to argument and analysis.  In…

Except for that small class of errors which are apparent, open and obvious to a lay jury, an expert is needed for either side in a legal malpractice case.  As an example, and although the case does not describe the expert’s testimony, its apparent that defense needed this expert to win the case.  In SCG …