For policy reasons New York Courts limit the types of damages that might be awarded in legal malpractice. Basically, as the NY Court of Appeals recently reiterated, only pecuniary loss may be the subject of legal malpractice litigation. This specifically and totally leaves out any type of emotional damages. Nevertheless people suffer these injuries when…

SuccessfulJudiciary Law 487 cases are more rare than those dismissed. An attempt to deceive courts coupled with sufficiently egregious behavior is necessary.  Courts often reject plaintiff’s attempts to portray attorney conduct as deceitful, finding instead that it is within normal limits.

In Cohen v Kachroo   2014 NY Slip Op 01674   Decided on March 13…

Sometimes, but rarely a defendant will move to strike pleadings that are "scandalous and prejudicial" under CPLR 3024(b).  Sometimes it just does not work.  In those instances, as in Armstrong v Blank Rome LLP  2014 NY Slip Op 30570(U)  March 6, 2014  Sup Ct, NY County
Docket Number: 651881/2013  Judge: Anil C. Singh…

Borges v Placeres  2014 NY Slip Op 24053  Decided on March 5, 2014  Appellate Term, First Department  is rather an amazing story.  On one level it is the vindication of a man harmed, on another level it is the story of mistake piled on top of mistake, and in the end, our guess is that…

We read all the NY cases published that discuss legal malpractice, and once in a while we read a case that merely mentions the words "legal malpractice" in another setting. Varano v FORBA Holdings, LLC  2014 NY Slip Op 24056  Decided on March 4, 2014  Supreme Court, Onondaga County  Karalunas, J. is the most gruesome case…

95% of the cases we see are former plaintiff versus their attorney, and the balance are former defendant against their attorney.  Of those, only one or two are the insurance company versus their attorney after a settlement.  Here, in The Insurance Corp. of N.Y. v Smith, Mazure,
Director, Wilkens, Young & Yagerman, P.C.   2014…

Defense attorneys, when moving to dismiss, or even to denigrate Plaintiff’s case will tell the court (rather haughtily) that  "this is the 4th attorney for plaintiff" or something similar.  Their point is that the case must be worthless if there have been multiple attorneys for plaintiff.

Wadsworth Condos LLC v Dollinger Gonski & Grossman. …

Piro sued Russo, Karl, Widmaier & Cordano PLLC for legal malpractice.  Piro used attorney Rodriguez for that case.  At the same time Bonacasa obtained a default judgment against Piro. A guess is that both arose from the same issues and that Russo, Karl should have been defending Piro from Bonacasa.  So, in Russo, Karl, Widmaier & Cordano …