Recovery of Emotional Harm in Legal Malpractice Claims?
When an attorney commits legal malpractice causing harm to his/her client, the client naturally feels upset. Many clients desire recovery of damages for their emotional distress as part of their legal malpractice action against their ... Read More →
Claims Against Your Spouse’s Divorce Lawyer? Probably Not
In Massachusetts, courts are reluctant to recognize claims against your adversary’s lawyer. Occasionally people will contact Kazarian Law seeking to bring a malpractice case against an attorney with whom they have no attorney-client relationship. An ... Read More →
Beyond Legal Malpractice
In my 40 years of practice as a trial lawyer in Massachusetts, with wide experience all over this Commonwealth, I can say without fear of contradiction that the vast majority of practicing attorneys are both ... Read More →
You Lost Your Case: Legal Malpractice Claims Arising From Bad Trial Results
Sometimes, clients feel that their trial lawyers are guarantors of a good result at trial. Under the common law, that is not so. If a lawyer does make inflated claims or goes so far as ... Read More →
The Worst Advice You Can Get About Your Legal Malpractice Case
Your lawsuit has gone wrong, and a judgment has been entered against you. You realized at the time of trial, or even before that, that your lawyer had committed an obvious error, such as failing ... Read More →
Road Block: Legal Malpractice By Criminal Lawyers
Sometimes, a criminal defendant is convicted and imprisoned because of a sub-standard performance by his criminal attorney. Lay logic would suggest that to win a malpractice action against the negligent criminal lawyer, all the guilty ... Read More →
Legal Malpractice But No Damages?
Sometimes an attorney badly mishandles a client’s case to such an extent that it can be said the attorney violated the duty of reasonable care (which, in Massachusetts, is the duty to use the degree ... Read More →
Who Has the Burden of Proof in Challenging A Massachusetts Contingency Fee Agreement?
In a recent unpublished Rule 1:28 decision, the Massachusetts Appeals Court ruled that when the reasonableness of contingent fee agreement is at issue, the attorney has the burden to prove reasonableness. A solo practitioner, Landry, sued his ... Read More →
Lawyer and Client Can Be Held “Jointly and Severally” Liable for Legal Fees
Sometimes, an opposing party can recover legal fees incurred for responding to a frivolous filing. It is now settled in Massachusetts that such a fee recovery can be had against both the frivolously filing party ... Read More →
Judicial Error: Intervening or Superseding Cause in Malpractice?
There is no such thing as actionable judicial malpractice, that is, a judicial officer cannot be sued for making an erroneous legal ruling. But, what is the relationship between attorney malpractice and judicial error, more ... Read More →
