In states other than NY, criminal defendants may sue their attorney after a conviction. In NY they may not. Here is a case from New Hampshire where the statute of limitations was tolled during incarcaration, permitting a legal malpractice case after. Report is from the Nelson Kindler blog.

John A. Day, in his Day on Torts reports on a Legal Malpractice case in which the attorney was defendant’s attorney in a ladder product liability case. The interesting point of his blog is that the focus of legal malpractice actions has veered away from simple blown statutes of limitation to questions of trial witnesses, use of evidence and the quality of cross-examination. These questions have traditionally been seen as “stragegy” issues, and presumably not subject to legal malpractice analysis. His take? More and more cases are being brought in the legal malpractice strategy/trial questions area, and will continue. Details.

Successfully sued for defamation, plaintiff turns and sues not only its defamation defense counsel in legal malpractice, but also its insurance carrier in bad faith. Plaintiff wins a big verdict from the jury, but the court now grants judgment notwithstanding the verict, dismissing not only the bad faith claim, but also the legal malpractice action. End result? Plaintiff won the battle but lost the war. The defendant attorney was Margolis Edelstein, and its own defense counsel was Spector, Gadon & Rosen, and the insurance company’s attorney was DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary

To show the worldwide nature of the legal malpractice industry, with its plaintiff’s bar, defendant’s bar, its insurers and experts, here is an article out of England, reported by a worldwide law firm, concerning a California legal malpractice case. The issue is a garden or varietal case of continuing representation and the statute of limitations in legal malpractice. Details.

1. Fontaine v. Matthews, 7654-7654A , SUPREME COURT OF NEW YORK, APPELLATE DIVISION, FIRST DEPARTMENT , 2006 NY Slip Op 388; January 24, 2006, Decided,It appears that the underlying federal action was brought by plaintiff, a seaman, against the owner of his ship [**2] to recover for personal injuries sustained in an assault by a fellow crewman. Although defendant represented plaintiff throughout the course of the pretrial proceedings in the federal action, and agreed to continue to represent plaintiff after suffering a stroke, as indicated in the transcript of the pretrial hearing before the magistrate and by his meaningful participation in the deposition of the ship’s medical expert, he failed to appear at the trial. This forced plaintiff and defendant’s co-counsel, enlisted by defendant after his stroke, to go to trial without defendant present.

2. Mahler v. Torres, 2005-03596 , SUPREME COURT OF NEW YORK, APPELLATE DIVISION, SECOND DEPARTMENT , 2006 NY Slip Op 487; January 24, 2006, Decided, The compliance conference order dated May 17, 2004, directing the plaintiff to serve and file a note of issue by September 13, 2004, and warning that the failure to comply would result in dismissal, had the same effect as a valid 90-day notice pursuant to CPLR 3216. Here, the plaintiff failed to demonstrate that his cause of action to recover damages for legal malpractice was meritorious.

3. Braun v. Rosenblum, 2005-00565 , SUPREME COURT OF NEW YORK, APPELLATE DIVISION, SECOND DEPARTMENT , 2006 NY Slip Op 467; January 24, 2006, Decided, “Although generally a defendant attorney is liable to the plaintiff for the claim he would have recovered in the dismissed suit . . . punitive damages are not included in this general claim theory. Thus, the plaintiffs may not recover in the instant legal malpractice action for any punitive damages that were [*2] “lost” when the underlying personal injury action was dismissed.”

4. Hayes v. Wilson, 2004-09558, 2005-01054 , SUPREME COURT OF NEW YORK, APPELLATE DIVISION, SECOND DEPARTMENT , 2006 NY Slip Op 336; “On a motion to dismiss a cause of action pursuant to CPLR 3211(a)(7), the court must accept the factual allegations of the complaint as true and accord the plaintiff all favorable inferences which may be drawn therefrom.Under this standard, the plaintiff’s complaint failed to sufficiently plead a cause of action against the defendant. However, the complaint sufficiently pleaded a cause of action to recover damages for legal malpractice against the second defendant”

5. Richter v. Davidson & Cohen, P.C., 2004-05729, Index No. 10115/04 , SUPREME COURT OF NEW YORK, APPELLATE DIVISION, SECOND DEPARTMENT , 2006 NY Slip Op 343; Client was not collaterally estopped from raising the issue of whether the attorney had actual authority to settle.