Many people take a look at a legal malpractice situation and stop after identifying a departure.  In more common language, after finding a mistake, the analysis ends.  Failure to identify and have all elements of legal malpractice will lead to failure. Sapienza v Becker & Poliakoff  2019 NY Slip Op 05218 Decided on June 27,…

Expert disclosure in New York is truely a black hole.  The statute does not require much by way of naming the expert.  You have to give the name and a little bit about what the expert will say.  However, the timing is completely up to court discretion.  Here is what one plaintiff did in a…

Sounds like the start of a joke?  This litigation is obviously not a joke for either side.  Bois Schiller uses an arbitration clause in their engagement letter, requiring arbitration of anything “arising from or relating to the Engagement” and they will go to great lengths to enforce it.  Even this particular billionaire client was unable…

We’re proud to let you know that we’re appearing in the New York Law Journal Outside Counsel Column with an article about the unique attorney-judgment rule, and how it affects legal malpractice litigation.  Here is an excerpt:

“Society relies on professionals to guide, to treat, to represent and to know. We place an extraordinary amount…

Not every attorney problem can be shoehorned into a Judiciary Law § 487 format.  US Suite LLC v Baratta, Baratta & Aidala LLP
2019 NY Slip Op 02837  Decided on April 16, 2019  Appellate Division, First Department is an example of a partially successful plaintiff’s case which fails on JL § 487.

“Plaintiffs’ complaint here,…

Citing a “strong public policy to dispose of cases on their merits” the Appellate Division First Department reversed in Cornwall Warehousing, Inc. v Lerner  2019 NY Slip Op 02825
Decided on April 16, 2019.

“Plaintiffs demonstrated a reasonable excuse for their default (CPLR 5015[a][1]), based on law office failure, as detailed in the affirmation of…

JL§ 487, possibly the oldest part of the anglo-american common law, but for the Magna Carta, regularly comes up in legal malpractice settings.  Here, in Sammy v Haupel 2019 NY Slip Op 02372
Decided on March 27, 2019 the Appellate Division, Second Department affirms the dismissal of a claim against Wilson Elser and its top…