Recently written about in Blog 702, the differences and similarities between Legal Malpractice and Medical Malpractice were discussed.. “Frank focuses on the differences beween medical malpractice litigation, where Frank says doctors often get held liable for making reasonable treatment decisions, and legal malpractice cases, where he says the lawyers get more slack.”

Ted Frank points out: “Yet, even with hundreds of millions of dollars at stake, one almost never sees legal malpractice claims in a lost or settled case: no client protests that a deponent could have been prepared better; that a cross-examination should have been more (or less) aggressive; that the attorney’s brief-writing failed to present arguments as clearly as it could have; that an opening or closing argument was too dry for the jury; that a settlement failed to extract the maximum possible value; that the law firm’s failure to have a client’s discovery ready when it filed a suit in a rocket docket alienated a judge that then made adverse rulings.” Continue Reading The “Business Judgment Rule” in Legal and Medical Malpractice

Law Com reports that: “A Miami federal jury has ordered a South Florida businessman to pay nearly $19 million in damages to an Italian family who claimed that it lost millions in an embezzlement scheme.

In separate litigation still pending in U.S. District Court in Miami, the family alleges that the Miami law firm of Pertnoy Solowsky & Allen helped the businessman, Edward Reizen, conceal a significant amount of the money.”

Recently it has been reported that the Pertnoy firm had “tampered” with published opinions by Judge Gold of Bankrupcy court, in the ExxonMobile case.

NY attorney Andres. M. Aranda was suspended for a year. The suspension was for neglecting a false arrest case, but the interesting item here is that the paned faulted the attorney for failing to advise the client of his rights to pursue a legal malpractice case. Details from the New York Law Journal article by Anthony Lin.

Obviously, it’s not legal malpractice to try a case using “big blow up photos”, rather than electronics [especially in non-tech equipped courtrooms}, but here is a blog blurb on the question. “I believe it is malpractice for an attorney to go in without an electronic presentation. Juries are very connected with electronic technology. If you don’t use the technology, you’re not being an effective advocate for your client.” Read the further details.

Here is the case of Hays v.Cave being discussed in a scholarly journal. We reported on it in May and Cassandra Crotty of Illinois Legal Malpractice Blog reported on it shortly thereafter. The gist of this case is that there can be no removal based simply on the idea that the defense to legal malpractice will depend on federal criminal practice. Rather, it takes jurisdiction: diversity or federal question. Defense on federal criminal practice is not a federal question.

Here, in an article by Anthony Lin are more changes to the relatively staid world of attorney fees. Retainer agreement rules are a shield and not a sword. Details. “A criminal defense lawyer’s failure to provide a client with an engagement letter or retainer agreement in violation of state code does not give the client the right to seek the return of a $15,000 retainer, a state judge has decided.”

Here is the famous Lynrd Skynrd royalties attorney fee case from the Court of Appeals. Now, says the NYJL in a John Caher article:

“* A client can ratify a fee agreement during a period of continuous representation;

* A client can ratify a fee agreement during a period of continuous representation even if attorney misconduct occurred in that time period, but not if the misconduct induced ratification; and

* A client can ratify an unconscionable attorney’s fee agreement. Here is the article.

It’s really rare to see a new twist in litigation. Here’s one: Plaintiff’s attorneys in a securities fraud litigation are themselves sued for breach of fiduciary duty. As they say: a convoluted story. “The convoluted case — possibly a first, several lawyers said — grows out of long-running securities litigation against Tenet Healthcare, and the competing state and federal derivative suits against the Tenet board of directors that were filed on its heels.”The attorneys are Skadden Arps.

A California judge is repremanded for telling criminal defendants that the advice given them by their defense counsel was tantamount to legal malpractice. He was quoted: “Fine,” Mills said, according to a transcript. “Sometimes I can’t protect people from themselves, and sometimes I can’t protect people from an attorney that is giving them the wrong advice. What I can tell you, Mr. Candappa, is that this is just stupidity and arrogance.” Details.