A classic expression we have heard is that if "x" was not able to be an attorney he would have been digging ditches or sewers.  Here is a case from Kentucky which combines the best of both worlds.

"MATHERLY LAND SURVEYING, INC. V. GARDINER PARK DEVELOPMENT
TORTS: LEGAL NEGLIGENCE; INDEMNITY
CIVIL PROCEDURE: STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS
2005-SC-000576-DG.pdf
2006-SC-000163-DG.pdf
PUBLISHED: REVERSING
OPINION OF THE COURT BY SCOTT
FROM: JEFFERSON
DATE RENDERED: 08/23/2007

SYNOPSIS: Engineering and Land Surveying (as a part of the engineering services) are professional services under KRS 413.245 and although damages were not EXACT they did not toll the statute of limitations.

Gardiner hired Matherly to design sewers and roads for a subdivision. Gardiner alleged that Matherly’s work was incorrect and hired other companies to finish the subdivision project. Gardiner also alleged that their attorneys committed malpractice by allowing the statute of limitations to run. The trial court granted the Matherly’s motion for summary judgment on the grounds that Gardiner’s claims were barred by KRS 403.245, Kentucky’s one-year professional services statute of limitations. The Trial court reasoned that Matherly performed engineering services that were supervised by a professional–the engineer. The Court of Appeals reversed on the grounds that Matherly also performed land surveying, which it opined was NOT a professional service and under KRS 413.245. Kentucky Supreme Court disagreed and held that Matherly held itself out as a professional engineering firm and had a professional engineer overseeing work on the ENTIRE project–even the land surveying. In addition, Gardiner believed Matherly was going to perform engineering services. The Supreme Court held that both the engineering and land surveying by Matherly were "professional" and subject to KRS 413.245. The court also held that Gardiner’s action was time barred and even if the exact damages may not have been known. Lastly the court rules that KRS 413.120 does not apply because this action is not an indemnity action. "

This attorney was working for the local township and was sued.  Now,  News Transcript reports that he might have a political prosecution defense, and may have either shielded, hid or voided his legal malpractice insurance.

"Ajudge’s ruling in Manalapan’s lawsuit against a former township attorney leaves both sides preparing for a possible trial.

On Sept. 11 state Superior Court Judge Terence P. Flynn, sitting in Freehold, denied attorney Stuart Moskovitz’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit that was filed against him by the Manalapan Township Committee.

Moskovitz was Manalapan’s municipal attorney in 2005.

Moskovitz said on Sept. 17 that he will now prepare a motion in which he will seek summary judgment in an attempt to have the lawsuit thrown out. He said it could be several months before he presents that motion to the court. Moskovitz said he may need to conduct depositions in order to prepare that document.

In a lawsuit filed in June, Manalapan officials allege that Moskovitz breached his responsibility to the township in 2005 at the time he was serving as the municipal attorney when he drew up a contract of sale for the township’s purchase of two single-family homes on Route 522 in front of the Manalapan Recreation Center.

A home at 95 Freehold Road (Route 522) was purchased for $432,000 and a home at 93 Freehold Road was purchased for $465,500. The township took possession of the properties on June 8, 2005. "

Reported in today’s NYLJ by Joel Stashenko, is the Court of Appeals affirmance of a dismissal in an estate legal malpractice case. 

"The state Court of Appeals yesterday upheld the dismissal of a legal malpractice action against the firm formerly known as Goodkind Labaton Rudoff & Sucharow. Jack E. Maurer, who died in 2005 at age 86, contended in a 2003 suit that his attorneys misled him into signing away control of his estate. Among Mr. Maurer’s holdings were a $12 million apartment on Central Park West and a $3 million home on Long Island. He also contended the law firm was conflicted because it represented his wife, Rona, at the same time it was handling his estate planning. In an unsigned unanimous ruling in Bishop v. Maurer, 162, the Court agreed with the Appellate Division, First Department (NYLJ, Oct. 25, 2006) that while Mr. Maurer was generally bound by the estate planning documents he signed, he was not precluded from bringing a malpractice action if his attorneys negligently gave him an incorrect explanation of their contents. The Court ruled, however, that Mr. Maurer’s complaint was "devoid" of nonconclusory allegations of what his attorneys failed to tell him or how he was otherwise misled or given incorrect advice. Prior to his death, Mr. Maurer was chief executive officer of a financial research and consulting firm, Indicator Research Group. The law firm is now known as Labaton Sucharow & Rudoff."

This Indiana Legal Malpractice Case dismissal is reversed on appeal, and remanded for further proceedings is a primer on matrimonial malpractice, the Indiana standard of care, and summary judgment procedure there.

In this upstate Legal Malpractice Case, plaintiffs entered into a high stakes high risk real estate and mortgage deal with sellers, who were encumbered and hounded by the IRS, County tax liens, and other debts.  Sales, mortgages, liens and law suits later the results of a legal malpractice case:

"It is undisputed that prior to accepting the mortgage, plaintiff was aware that its $300,000 loan which carried a 16% interest rate was a high risk transaction, as the Carneys had in excess of $1 million in judgments and liens at the time the loan was made. Indeed, the Carneys indebtedness to the Internal Revenue Service alone exceeded $955,000. Significantly, the $300,000 loan proceeds check was made directly payable to the Internal Revenue Service, which accepted this sum in partial satisfaction of the Carneys’ indebtedness and agreed to subordinate its remaining liens to plaintiff’s mortgage. Hence, the value of plaintiff’s security interest, even before the tax certificates were sold, was impacted by the superior liens of the unpaid property taxes. Had plaintiff acquired the property through foreclosure, for example, the taxes still would have had to be satisfied, the Carney debt would have been eliminated and, as such, so would any damages to plaintiff stemming from defendants’ alleged malpractice (see Central Hanover Bank & Trust Co. v Roslyn Estates, Inc., 266 App Div 244, 248-249 [1943], affd 293 NY 680 [1944]).

We must also reject plaintiff’s assertion that it has, nevertheless, been damaged by the loss of its opportunity to foreclose on the mortgage because the tax sale certificates had already been sold when the Carneys defaulted, giving the holder of the certificates the right to apply for a deed free of plaintiff’s mortgage. Plaintiff knew that in order to protect the mortgage, the rapidly accumulating unpaid real property tax liability would ultimately have to be satisfied. Thus, any failure by defendants to report the precise significance of the real property tax liability as of the closing is of no real consequence under these circumstances [FN1]. When plaintiff became aware that [*5]the tax sale certificates had been sold, an opportunity still existed to purchase them from their holder. The resulting devaluation of plaintiff’s security interest was no greater than it had been as a result of plaintiff’s acceptance of the mortgage with full knowledge of the outstanding tax liens. In fact, Corvetti was able to purchase the tax sale certificates from TCA in December 1996 at essentially the then current cost of satisfying the original tax liens.[FN2]

Thus, we conclude that the purchase of the tax sale certificates and ultimate acquisition of the property would have placed plaintiff in essentially the same position that it would have been in had it been able to foreclose on the property. Plaintiff argues, however, that it remains damaged because it was Corvetti and his wife, rather than plaintiff, that ultimately took title to the property. We reject this argument because, in our view, the facts presented represent one of those rare opportunities where we are able to find, as a matter of law, that a breach of fiduciary duty occurred (see Matter of Greenberg [Madison Cabinet & Interiors], 206 AD2d 963, 964 [1994]). By acquiring the property personally rather than on behalf of plaintiff, Corvetti misappropriated a corporate opportunity in breach of his fiduciary duty as president of plaintiff. Thus, any damage to plaintiff as a result of the tax sale was caused by Corvetti, rather than the alleged negligence of defendants.

Here is a further article on a $ 19 Million settlement in a Japanese American anti-dumping case arising from discovery mistakes by Perkins Coie.

"Perkins Coie reached a multimillion-dollar settlement last month with former client Tokyo Kikai Seisakusho, a manufacturer of large newspaper printing presses. The Japanese company sued two of the firm’s Washington-based partners for malpractice in February 2006 stemming from work they did in a legal dispute involving anti-dumping laws.

TKS agreed to drop its suit against the Seattle-based firm on Aug. 22. Days before the settlement documents were filed, the company announced in a press release that it would receive $19 million to settle a malpractice suit arising from an anti-dumping case. It did not name the law firm in the release, citing a nondisclosure agreement.

"By the time the case went to trial in November 2003, the parties had exchanged more than a million pages of documents, taken scores of depositions on two continents, and translated thousands of communications from Japanese to English.

But in its malpractice complaint, TKS says there was one document in particular that proved critical to the case: In 1996, the company sold two printing presses to The Dallas Morning News with a disguised rebate. TKS and the News originally agreed on a price of $5.2 million for the two presses — the same price TKS had charged the News two years earlier in a similar deal that the Commerce Department later determined to have violated anti-dumping laws. With that in mind, TKS says in its complaint that Perkins’ Saito advised the company to raise the price on the new presses by $2.2 million to avoid another government review. In conjunction with the price increase, though, Saito built a hidden rebate for the News into the deal through a combination of cancelled fees and free supplies that would reduce the paper’s cost back to the 1994 price tag. TKS followed Saito’s advice.

A SECRET REBATE REVEALED

And that’s when Goss got lucky. During discovery, TKS claims that Perkins Coie made the costly error of sending Goss’ attorneys privileged documents outlining the printing press transaction with the News. According to the complaint, those documents also showed that Saito advised TKS to destroy any evidence of the true cost of the presses sold to the News.

But Nicholas Critelli, name partner of Nicholas Critelli Associates, who was local counsel for TKS in the Goss trial, says it was unclear that handing over the documents was inadvertent or, in hindsight, a poor tactical decision. "

This is an estate legal malpractice case in which "In 1993, nonparty Ricki Singer created an irrevocable inter vivos trust for the benefit of herself and her son as a remainderman, with plaintiff Frieda Tydings, her aunt, designated as the sole trustee. The trust agreement did not require plaintiff to offer an accounting, nor is there any indication that the grantor ever requested an accounting until on or about August 20, 2003, over six years later, when she filed a petition in the Surrogate’s Court for a compulsory accounting and the suspension of Steven Singer’s authority pending a proceeding to remove him as trustee.

Plaintiff retained defendant Greenfield, Stein & Senior, LLP to represent her in the proceeding. While the firm submitted a notice of appearance dated September 9, 2003, it did not thereafter file an answer to the petition or any other response. As a result, on September 24, 2003, the Surrogate issued an order directing both plaintiff and successor trustee Steven Singer to provide an accounting.

Plaintiff thereafter retained a new attorney, and her final accounting was filed on November 14, 2004. However, the grantor objected to the accounting and sought to surcharge plaintiff with respect to certain matters that had purportedly occurred prior to her resignation as trustee. Plaintiff’s new lawyer moved to dismiss the objections, relying on the applicable six year statute of limitations (CPLR 213).

The Surrogate denied plaintiff’s motion, holding that "the statute of limitations can begin to run on the beneficiary’s right to an accounting only where the former fiduciary has failed to have accounted after a reasonable time to do so has passed" (Matter of Singer, 12 Misc 3d 621, 625 [2006]). This Court affirmed, but did so on the ground that the "former trustee waived her statute of limitations defense by failing to raise it in response to the grantor’s petition to compel an accounting,

Plaintiff former trustee then commenced this legal malpractice action against her first attorneys. Defendant law firm moved for dismissal on grounds of collateral estoppel, arguing that the Surrogate’s determination in Matter of Singer, (12 Misc 3d at 621, supra), rejecting the statute of limitations defense, which decision was subsequently affirmed, established that plaintiff could not have prevailed in the accounting proceeding in any event.

We therefore conclude that collateral estoppel cannot properly be relied upon to preclude plaintiff from demonstrating that but for defendant’s alleged malpractice, she would have prevailed in that accounting action, and the motion to dismiss is therefore denied.

"

A trove of photos, including the famous Marilyn Monroe up-draft photo are the res over which the Shaw family fought for years.  Father against son, sisters against brother… Finally it ended, with an Appellate Decision which sets forth the attorney rights to billing, doubling of bills and judiciary law liens.

"Over the course of his photographic career, Sam Shaw took thousands of pictures of celebrities, including the famous photograph of Marilyn Monroe with her skirt blowing upward. In 1994, he commenced an action against his son Larry, also a photographer, for conversion of over 200,000 commercially valuable photographic images and related claims, and sought a declaration of ownership rights, an accounting of the images, unspecified compensatory damages, and $100 million in punitive damages (the Shaw family action). Larry, contending that Sam had gifted or assigned rights in the photographs to him, and that he, not Sam, had shot some of them, raised ten counterclaims. In 1995, Supreme Court dismissed several of the counterclaims, but in 1998 granted Larry the right to examine all 500,000 photographs in Sam’s possession.

Upon Sam’s death in April 1999, Supreme Court appointed his daughters, Edith Shaw Marcus and Meta Shaw Stevens (collectively, the Shaw sisters), temporary administrators to prosecute the action against Larry, and appointed a receiver of the 500,000 photographs that had been in Sam’s possession. The receiver stored the photographs in a warehouse, where they were damaged. The receiver filed a $2 million claim with the insurer, which filed for bankruptcy protection; the claim was turned over to the New York State Liquidation Bureau and assigned to an adjuster, but remains unresolved. The charging liens also attach to any insurance proceeds for damage to photographic images while in storage. The "enforcement of a charging lien is founded upon the equitable notion that the proceeds of a settlement are ultimately under the control of the court, and the parties within its jurisdiction, [and the court] will see that no injustice is done to its own officers’" (Schneider, Kleinick, Weitz, Damashek & Shoot v City of New York, 302 AD2d 183, 187 [2002], quoting Rooney v Second Ave. R.R. Co., 18 NY 368, 369 [1858]). "The statute is remedial in character, and hence should be construed liberally in aid of the object sought by the legislature, which was to furnish security to attorneys by giving them a lien upon the subject of the action" (Fischer-Hansen v Brooklyn Hgts. R.R. Co., 173 NY 492, 499 [1903]). The lien is imposed on the client’s cause of action, in whatever form it may take during the course of litigation, and follows the proceeds, wherever they may be found (see Matter of Cohen v Grainger, Tesoriero & Bell, 81 NY2d 655, 658 [1993]). "