Dawson v Schoenberg  2015 NY Slip Op 04603  Decided on June 3, 2015  Appellate Division, Second Department is the sister case to Dawson which we discussed yesterday.  As is well settled, in a legal malpractice case against a former defense attorney, plaintiff must demonstrate that the conviction “was due to the attorney’s actions alone and…

Gelwan v Youni Gems Corp.  2015 NY Slip Op 30916(U)  June 2, 2015  Supreme Court, New York County  Docket Number: 653656/2013  Judge: Manuel J. Mendez is an example of how much time and effort attorneys are willing to put into their own fee dispute cases.  Here the dispute is over a contingent fee in a…

Melnick v Farrell  2015 NY Slip Op 03658  Decided on May 1, 2015  Appellate Division, Fourth Department is an interesting case about upstate inventors, selling an invention to another company, protection in a future bankruptcy proceedings, and how a multi-million dollar asset can be lost without attorney malpractice.

“Memorandum: Plaintiffs commenced this legal malpractice action…

Johnson v Proskauer Rose LLP    2015 NY Slip Op 03626   Decided on April 30, 2015   Appellate Division, First Department  Mazzarelli, J., J. is the story of heirs who are seduced into an expensive tax avoidance scheme, only to lose millions.  Whose fault is it?  Is the story merely greedy heirs, or is it fraud by…

The Court of Appeals said that the statute of limitations for Judiciary Law § 487 is six years in Melcher v Greenberg Traurig, LLP  23 NY3d 10.  Thus, even if a claim for attorney deceit originated in the first Statute of Westminster rather than preexisting English common law (a question unresolved by Amalfitano and disputed…

Plaintiffs attempted to bring a legal malpractice action after three years had elapsed, and relied upon pleadings which cited “fraud.”  The Appellate Division reminded all that there is no real circumvention of the statute of limitations, and that the fraud has to be extrinsic to the attorney-client relationship.

Hsu v Liu & Shields LLP…

Client owns a gas station.  A  dump truck and a fuel truck collide and explode.  The station is closed for 5 years while remediation of the fuel spill goes on.  They sue the trucks, and lose.  Was this legal malpractice?

This case appears to be the first application of Grace v. Law in which the…

In a short and cryptic decision, the First Department affirmed dismissal of a legal malpractice case. Evart v Shapiro, Beilly & Aronowitz, LLP  2015 NY Slip Op 02847  Decided on April 2, 2015  Appellate Division, First Department consists of just two sentences.  Really only one counts.

“The motion court properly dismissed plaintiff’s legal malpractice claims,…