Legal Malpractice

Foreign and Domestic Marital Law and Legal Malpractice

By (Andrew Lavoott Bluestone)

Today we look at a second legal malpractice motion decided this week by Justice Emily Jane Goodman in Supreme Court, New York County.  This case involves a divorce action between a US husband and a Czech wife, with immigration and fraud elements mixed in.  On top of the international aspects of the case, Justice Goodman upheld [in a motion to dismiss] the viability of a Judicary Law 487 claim.

 IN Koch v. Sheresky, Aronson & Mayersky,  2009 NYSlip Op 31520 (u), the claim is that husband left the Czech Republic and his marriage to her, after adopting her son, and commenced a marital action in NY.  In that marital action he claimed that there were no children of the marriage, and that significant commercial assets were marital property, rather than being subject to partnership agreements.In the case plaintiff-wife alleges that her attorneys failed to challenge subject matter as well as personal jurisdiction issues, and withdrew without resolving partnership/business interests. More interesting is the Judiciary Law 487 claim against the Husband's attorneys [with whom she had no privity] over alleged immigrration advice which led to her not being able to come to the US to contest the divorce proceedings.

An inquest followed, and not until much later was the default judgment vacated. By then all the business assets had vaporized. Husband is now himself absent and in default, and the legal malpractice action, after mixed results in the motions to dismss, continues.
 

Full post as published by New York Attorney Malpractice Blog on July 17, 2009 (boomark / email).