Legal Malpractice

Where is the Correct Venue in Legal Malpractice?

By (Andrew Lavoott Bluestone)

Venue is the "where" of legal malpractice's five W's.  Venue is determined by who is bringing the action, what the cause of action consists of,  How is venue determined.  In NY jurisprudence the short answer for most cases is where one of the parties resides.  Some times it is where the wrong was committed.  Here in Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory v. Ropes & Gray we see US District Judge Spatt deciding where to hold the trial.  In a NYLJ article Joel Stashenko writes:

"Eastern District Judge Arthur D. Spatt said in Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory v. Ropes & Gray, 20-cv-661, that venue has generally been determined in such malpractice actions based on where an attorney's improper conduct allegedly occurred, not where the injured parties were located at the time.

Judge Spatt noted that Mr. Vincent appears to have drafted the Hannon applications with material copied from the Fire application while working in Ropes & Gray's Boston office; that he made assurances to Mr. Hannon and the Cold Spring lab by phone or e-mail from Boston that he was watching out for Mr. Hannon's best interests, and that he failed repeatedly to tell the lab that he had copied the Fire material in the applications.

Mr. Vincent did meet with lab personnel on several occasions in Long Island early in the patent application process, but the judge said that discussions at those sessions did not directly relate to the alleged malpractice.

"Because the Defendants did not commit any of the alleged acts or omissions underlying the legal malpractice claim in the Eastern District of New York, and any relevant communications were tangential to the legal malpractice claim, venue is not proper in the Eastern District of New York," Judge Spatt wrote.

Ropes & Gray had sought to transfer the case to Boston, where its main offices are located."

In 2009, the firm fired Mr. Vincent after it discovered that a patent database company that billed the firm and clients for more than $730,000 was owned by Mr. Vincent.

The attorney was a specialist in patent law and intellectual property at Ropes & Gray and the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory's chief outside patent prosecution counsel from 2001 to 2008. According to the lab's complaint, he was paid $1.82 million in legal fees over that period.
 

Full post as published by New York Attorney Malpractice Blog on January 25, 2011 (boomark / email).