One aspect of legal malpractice litigation is the failure to follow developments in the law. Rules change and not keeping up with the changes leads to mistakes, criticism and, later, litigation. The rules for non-party discovery have undergone some changes over the years, and today’s decision is worth reading.

In Kooper v Kooper ; 2010…

The question of how a competent and qualified attorney would handle a case is the crux of Bua v Purcell & Ingrao, P.C.   2012 NY Slip Op 06908   Decided on October 17, 2012   Appellate Division, Second Department .  At issue is whether attorney committed malpractice in the termination of a real estate contract of…

Airey v Remmele  2012 NY Slip Op 22299   Decided on October 15, 2012   Supreme Court, Erie County   NeMoyer, J.  is a case we started to read, and then had to go back to the beginning to sort out.  Who would have thought that this story would have happened in the Buffalo area? 
 

While…

In this recurring situation, plaintiff has both a California and a NY connection, and hired an attorney to do some work, which eventually goes sour. Frequently a case like this comes up in the entertainment field, with its CA and NY roots. As an example, Basilotta v Warshavsky ; 2011 NY Slip Op 32185(U); August…

The claims in this case (and the related cases) cannot be harmonized with the defenses.  This series of huge real estate transactions either reveals corruption and theft, or plaintiff is totally wrong.  There does not seem to be any middle ground.

Silver v Newman   2012 NY Slip Op 32572(U)   October 2, 2012   Supreme Court, Suffolk…

Try to sort through Tolmosova v Umarova   2012 NY Slip Op 51921(U)     Decided on October 1, 2012   Supreme Court, Kings County   Schmidt, J. and you will see two things.  There is a reason such a large percentage of new businesses fail.  The second is that the hearing on this case must have been amazing.…

We don’t often see a US District Court Judge get so worked up.  Here, in PAUL BLACK, Plaintiff, -against- JEFFREY S. SCHWARTZ and LAW OFFICE OF JEFFREY S. SCHWARTZ, Defendants.09-CV-2271(JS)(GRB)     UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK     2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 132524 we see a garden or varietal legal malpractice…

The statute of limitations exists in part because of the human need to get things behind us.  For commerce and (in general) life to keep on the law imposes a bright-line, specific period of time, after which it’s just too late.  To be fair, even when some are disenfranchised, its a good idea.

In legal…