“When a former client, angered by a dismissal at the dispositive motion stage, commences an action against the lawyer, instead of appealing the lower court’s decision, is the lawyer left with no opportunity to vindicate him or herself? This issue was recently addressed by the Court of Appeals of New York,” write Latha Raghavan and Seth L. Laver, partners in Goldberg Segalla’s Professional Liability Practice Group.

In this article written for Riding the E&O Line, the newsletter of the DRI Professional Liability Committee, Latha and Seth examine the implications of the recent New York Court of Appeals decision in Grace v. Law. “If faced with defending a legal malpractice case where the plaintiff failed to pursue an appeal,” they write, “the defense must be prepared to show that the proximate cause of the damages was not attorney negligence but rather judicial error that would have been corrected had an appeal been pursued.”

Read the article here:

• Latha Raghavan and Seth L. Laver, “Legal Malpractice Standard: When Former Client Fails to Appeal Unfavorable Judgment in the Underlying Action and Sues the Lawyer Instead,” DRI Riding the E&O Line, December 19, 2014