From the AP:

"Alexander T. Harvey has a choice to make before the end of next month: apologize for skipping out on jury duty or serve 30 days behind bars.

During questioning last week in court in Fremont, Neb., by attorneys to determine the jury makeup for a three-day civil trial, Harvey asked to be excused to go to the restroom. When told he would have to wait, Harvey got up and left the courtroom — never to return.

"The court was not amused," Harvey said.

A few days later, Harvey was subpoenaed back to the court, where Judge John Samson told him he had until May 21 to write an apology letter or turn himself in.

"They take fulfilling your complete jury duty very seriously," said Harvey, 51. "It was my mistake and I shouldn’t have done that, and I’m going to write the apology."

Harvey gave a number of reasons why he didn’t think he was going to make the jury: He said he knew the plaintiff in the case and said he didn’t like the way an attorney was questioning him.

But he said he’s learned his lesson.

"It’s not certainly a landmark case but it was an education," he said. "

Here is the website from this Press Release seen today:

"A new Website includes documents from actual cases and legal actions taken against lawyers. This information should be, but is not, readily accessible to the public. The Web site aims to educate viewers about choosing an attorney — through research.

Raleigh, NC (PRWEB) April 27, 2007 — An unusual new Website, LousyLawyer.info, is not a gripe site but an educational tool for consumers who need to hire lawyers.

LousyLawyer.info includes lists of lawyers disciplined by various state bar associations, sued for malpractice, and/or indicted on criminal charges. Viewers can click links to the legal documents that support this information.

The Website is an example of the type of research consumers need to do before hiring a lawyer. Consumer advocate and author Gloria Grening Wolk failed to do this research on her own behalf, when she hired a lawyer recommended by another attorney. Now she is suing an attorney who she claims extorted money from her.

"I learned the hard way," said Wolk, who used research to help another victim of lawyers find a competent, trustworthy attorney in another state. "

Judicial Reports tells the tale of a 4 time elevator plaintiff who eventually lost and then sued his attorneys.  The case doesn’t come right out and say it, but:

"The plaintiff allegedly was injured in several elevator accidents at his place of employment. An action to recover damages for personal injuries was commenced against the companies that maintained the elevators. In the instant action, the complaint alleges, inter alia, that the defendants Wallace & Minchenberg, Fred Wallace, individually and as a member of Wallace & Minchenberg, and Alfred Minchenberg, individually and as a member of Wallace & Minchenberg (hereinafter the defendants), the attorneys who commenced the underlying personal injury action, committed legal malpractice by failing to properly prosecute the action.

Judicial Reports is more explicit: "Bennett A. Cohen kept getting hurt in elevators — or so he claimed. The lawyers he hired to exact compensation from the culprits responsible for the injuries he allegedly sustained in four elevator mishaps between 1989 and 1992 must have suspected that their litigious client might eventually turn on them, as he did. When the last of the elevator tort claims collapsed, Cohen sued the law firm for malpractice for allegedly mishandling his slam-dunk tort suits. Kings County Justice Lawrence Knipel apparently wasn’t in any hurry to unhitch the lawyers from the petard that they had theretofore been carrying on their former client’s behalf.

Knipel denied the lawyers’ motion to dismiss Cohen’s claims against them, leaving it to the Appellate Division to put an end to it. A unanimous appellate panel concluded that the law firm, Wallace & Minchenberg, can’t be held accountable for failing to vigorously prosecute the personal injury actions because they had no chance of succeeding. The evidence they produced in support of Cohen’s claims stemming from the first three accidents failed to show that the elevator maintenance companies were aware of problems but let them go unfixed, the appellate judges observed, reversing Knipel and dismissing Cohen’s claims related to those cases.

Cohen’s malpractice claim stemming from the fourth alleged accident was filed against the law firm long after the three-year statute of limitations had expired. Knipel should have dismissed that claim on that account, the Appellate Division said. Cohen v. Wallace & Minchenberg (April 17) "

Try to figure out the tangled web in this land – real estate – develepoment – municipal case taking place in Texas. "The law firm of Godwin Pappas Ronquillo LLP, representing the City of Celina, filed a lawsuit on April 19 against the defendants Robert Brown and Brown and Hofmeister LLP.

In the lawsuit between Pilot Point and Celina regarding annexation of the Talley Ranch, Brown was representing the City of Pilot Point. In January of 2007, Judge Bruce McFarling disqualified Brown, Brown and Hofmeister LLP, and attorney Mark Goldstucker from the lawsuit due to conflicts of interest. In the lawsuit recently filed against Brown and his firm, Celina is holding Brown and Brown and Hofmeister LLP liable for legal malpractice.

“The lawyer that was negotiating with Talley Ranch on behalf of Pilot Point (Robert Brown) is the same lawyer that was helping Celina on their annexation,” said David LaBrec, Celina’s attorney in Celina v. Pilot Point. “My client felt as if it was a conflict for Mr. Brown, and I felt like it was a conflict. Celina moved to disqualify him, and that was very expensive. Now (Brown and Hofmeister LLP) have been disqualified, so we’re prepared to move forward with the litigation.”

The Court of Appeals decided two interesting legal malpractice cases today.  AmBase v. Davis Polk is one and Rudolph v. Shayne Dachs is the second. Rudolph is interesting on at least two counts.

In this case plaintiff was injured as a pedestrian.  Defendant law firm asked for the wrong jury instruction, and as a result plaintiff won, but was seriously hit with comparative liability.  He hired new counsel, got a new trial on the basis of the wrong jury instruction, and settled the case for about 15X the amount.

He sued in legal malpractice asking for two things:  the attorney fees to fix the first trial, with the repeat costs of the second trial [experts, etc].  On this he won.  The second thing he asked for was interest on the difference between the first recovery and the second recovery from the date of  trial 1.  On this he lost.

The decision is interesting for two items:  The Court of Appeals fleshed out what expenses may be recoverable "in an attempt to avoid, minimizev or reduce the damage caused by attorney wrongful conduct", citing DePinto v. Rosenthal & Curry and Baker v. Dorfman.

The court also left open what  and whether predecision interest may be recoverable in legal malpractice in its last footnote.

This case, in which DP represented AmBase Corp. involved litigation in a tax matter.  AmBase sued DP on the theory that it never owed taxes, and DP failed to represent it carefully.  Supreme Court, New York County dismissed the case, the AD 1 affirmed, the Court of Appeals granted leave to appeal, and then affirmed,  Joel Stashenko of Law Com writes:

"Davis Polk was retained in 1992 to represent AmBase in a dispute over about $20 million in federal withholding taxes the Internal Revenue Service sought from the company for 1979 through 1985. In May 2001, the U.S. Tax Court ruled that AmBase owed none of the money sought by the IRS.

Though it won the tax case, AmBase balked when Davis Polk submitted a bill for a $1,424,104 "success fee" that was provided for in the retainer agreement between the company and the firm. The fee was calculated at 150 percent of Davis Polk’s billed time, subject to a $2 million cap. AmBase filed a legal malpractice claim and sought to have Davis Polk return previously paid legal fees.

It contended that Davis Polk should have informed the company sooner that it did not appear AmBase would be liable for any of the taxes sought by the IRS. AmBase argued that its financial condition was weakened, and its economic opportunities were limited, because it had to carry a large loss reserve for years on the possibility that it could lose the tax case.

Both Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Louis B. York and the Appellate Division, 1st Department, in AmBase Corporation v. Davis Polk & Wardwell, 30 A.D. 3d 171, 172 (2006), dismissed the complaint. Both lower courts, like the Court of Appeals on Thursday, found AmBase’s contention that it suffered from the lack of earlier notice it was probably off the hook for the tax bill "purely speculative" and an insufficient basis for a legal malpractice claim.

In AmBase Corp. v. Davis Polk & Wardwell, 51, Judge Carmen Beauchamp Ciparick wrote Thursday that Davis Polk "exercised the ordinary reasonable skill and knowledge commonly possessed by a member of a legal profession" as established under McCoy v. Feinman, 99 N.Y. 2d 295, 301-302 (2002). "

From the W Va Record: "CHARLESTON – A Kanawha County attorney is being sued by his former clients who claim he failed to file their lawsuit within the statute of limitations period.

Dayton Price and Suzan Price named Stephen P. Swisher as defendant in a lawsuit filed April 11 in Kanawha Circuit Court.

The Prices were married at the time, but are currently separated.

According to the suit, Swisher was retained by the Prices after Dayton Price was in an accident at the Lowe’s store in Nitro on April 15, 2003.

"Despite being cognizant of the date of Mr. Price’s injury, (Swisher) failed to effectively preserve and/or pursue plaintiffs’ underlying claims by filing a civil action for such claims within the applicable statute of limitations period," the suit states.

The Prices claims Swisher did not file the suit in an attempt to conceal or erase the error to further their detriment, the suit says.

From Law Com:

"Popular belief, at least in medical communities, holds that juries in medical malpractice cases tend to side with plaintiffs, even where the case against a doctor is a weak one.

But jurors actually tend to believe doctors more than they do plaintiffs, says a law professor who examined numerous data on medical malpractice litigation, including cases in New Jersey.

Philip Peters Jr., of the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Law, concluded that juries treat doctors favorably, "perhaps unfairly so," and are more likely than even fellow physicians to defer to a doctor’s opinion.

Peters found that most malpractice suits end in defense verdicts, and that the cases that go to trial tend to be the weakest ones, since those with strong evidence usually settle before trial.

In an examination of win rates, Peters found that 27 percent to 30 percent of filed medical malpractice suits end in a plaintiff’s verdict, the lowest success rate of any type of tort litigation.

Peters researched the data to test the assumption that juries lack capacity to evaluate medical malpractice suits fairly — an assumption implicit in legislation pending in Congress that would create specialized courts for such cases.

"Politicians and critics of jury performance should think twice before concluding that doctors will be treated more favorably in health courts," wrote Peters, whose report will be published in May in the Michigan Law Review. "

Legal and medical malpractice share roots, histories and are both about professional shortcomings.  Do they share this attribute too?