This is not a legal malpractice case, or better put, not yet. Wexler & Burkhart were stopped from an inquest on legal fees until they provided proofs of compliance with Rule 137. often, when the fee dispute matures, a claim of legal malpractice is made. It is somethimes, but not always reflexive. Often, the claimed legal malpractice is the reason for non-payment.

The headline was startling: Sword Attacker questions Attorney’s sidework. The gist: Sword attacker Dion Goodell, who is serving a sentence for slicing someone’s wrists with a long sword, questioned whether his attorney, who writes appeals on his own time, and with his own legal malpractice coverage, had done him wrong. Question is still open. Details.

Plaintiff was the wife in a divorce. Defendant Antokol & Coffin was the law firm who represented her. Her legal malpractice case turned on the lack of a second valuation witness. Law firm countercliams for legal fees. Legal malpractice action is dismissed on basis that plaintiff failed to present an affidavit from a second valuation witness which would have proven higner values. Attorney wins fee counterclaim which is then reversed on the basis that the attorney told the jury that the malpractice case had been dismissed too many times. Details.

Here is a very interesting Legal Malpractice [LM] after a Medical Malpractice{MM} case which comments on the judgment rule in legal malpractice cases, as well as a unique New Jersey presumption. At the MM trial, plaintiff was unable to provide an expert; their expert had died, and no one else found a deviation. the LM plaintiffs relied on a presumption that the use of an expert in an underlying case would have increased the success rate; if this is true, then the burden shifts to legal malpractice defendant to show it’s not true.

In dismissing the LM case, the Supreme Court of New Jersey determined that it was plaintiff’s burden to provide a medical expert’s affidavit in the LM case to show that there was a deviation. They still had none, and lost. Details.

The level of acrimony here is beyond belief. Legal malpractice complaint, counter-defamation law suit, malicious allegations. Try to figure out why and when this law suit started, and why the two parties have such animus. I can’t untangle the facts.Here is the article from the NYLJ. Details.