Legal Malpractice

To Whom is the Duty Owed in Legal Malpractice

By (Andrew Lavoott Bluestone)

Decedents, Estates, Administrators, Lawsuits.  This area of legal malpractice is extraordinarily twisted and difficult when asserting privity.  Take for example the question of an executor suing the decedent's attorney [who prepared the will] or the estate's attorney [who offered the will for probate.]  They are not necessarily the same person, and different statutes of limitation calculate ions apply.  There will sometimes be privity between the estate and the will-writing attorney, and at other times, none,  see, Jacobs v. Kay, 2008 NYSlipOp 03710.

Here, similarly, is a Texas Case, reported in the Southeastern Texas Record.

"Houston attorney Harold Dutton had appealed Jefferson County 60th District Judge Gary Sanderson's declaratory judgment that Dugas and his firm owed no duty to a client of Dutton's. However on June 12 the appeals court upheld Sanderson's in favor of Dugas in an opinion authored by Justice Hollis Horton.

The case began when Elizabeth Roberts hired Dugas & Associates to handle a survival claim after the death of her brother, Vincent Lazard. Roberts represented to Dugas that she was "the proper party" to bring suit and that she would undertake the steps required to be appointed as the personal representative of her brother's estate. She also represented to Dugas that no administration of Lazard's estate was pending.

"Based upon its relationship with (Roberts), Dugas & Associates filed a healthcare liability suit against (Lazard's) healthcare providers on behalf of his estate," Justice Horton writes.

However Dugas then learned that prior to filing the suit, Patricia Covington had been appointed as executor of Lazard's estate and that Covington had hired Harold Dutton to prosecute healthcare liability claims.

Dugas then filed suit against Dutton, stating that he was "surprised to learn Patricia Covington had been appointed executor" of Lazard's estate. "

Full post as published by New York Attorney Malpractice Blog on June 23, 2008 (boomark / email).