Opinion ID: 1476402
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Malpractice

Text: Although Ms. Taylor's complaint does not contain a separate claim of legal malpractice, it does state that Akin Gump by oversight or negligence failed to notify the plaintiff as ordered by the court.... Reading that statement in the light most favorable to Ms. Taylor, and bearing in mind the generous standard of review applicable to dismissals under Rule 12(b)(6), [2] we think it appropriate at least to consider whether there might be a viable claim of malpractice here. We conclude that there is not. In the context of this case, a claim of malpractice would have to be based on the notion that Akin Gump was negligent when it failed to notify Ms. Taylor that the damage claims in the first lawsuit had been dismissed, and that she was not a member of the class that had been certified in the second lawsuit. But the statement in Ms. Taylor's complaint that Akin Gump failed to notify [her] as ordered by the court is a specific reference to a portion of Judge Greene's class certification order of April 27, 1989, which Ms. Taylor attached to her complaint as an exhibit. Judge Greene in that order directed that notice of the existence of the class, see Super. Ct. Civ. R. 23(c)(2), be given to all members of the class, which he defined in the preceding paragraph as comprised of all persons who were tenants of Tyler House Apartments as of July 27, 1988. Since Ms. Taylor had ceased to be a Tyler House tenant in June 1987, more than a year before that cutoff date, she was not a member of the class and therefore was not entitled to notice under Judge Greene's order. Furthermore, the order said nothing at all about giving notice to anyone that the damage claims in the first lawsuit had been dismissed in November 1987. In order to prove legal malpractice, a plaintiff must establish the applicable standard of care, a breach of that standard, and a causal relationship between the violation and the harm complained of. Mills v. Cooter, 647 A.2d 1118, 1123 (D.C.1994) (citation omitted). Thus Ms. Taylor would first have to establish that Akin Gump owed her a duty, because a professional malpractice claim depends upon the existence of a duty. Absent duty there can be no breach and no negligence. Goldberg v. Frye, 217 Cal.App.3d 1258, 1267, 266 Cal.Rptr. 483, 488 (1990) (citations omitted); see 1 RONALD E. MALLEN & JEFFREY E. SMITH, LEGAL MALPRACTICE § 7.13, at 527 (4th ed.1996) (hereafter MALLEN & SMITH) (Whatever the legal theory ... there must be a duty of care owed by the attorney to the plaintiff); N.O.L. v. District of Columbia, 674 A.2d 498, 499 (D.C.1995). [3] With rare exceptions, [4] a legal malpractice claim against an attorney cannot withstand a summary judgment motion unless there is evidence showing the existence of an attorney-client relationship. It is on this point that any malpractice claim must fail, because Ms. Taylor has not shown that she was ever Akin Gump's client. When the Tyler House litigation began, Akin Gump represented only the Tyler House Tenant Council in its dispute with the owners of the building. The initial lawsuit named the Tenant Council as the only plaintiff. Although the complaint described the council as including all the tenants of the apartment building, the suit was not filed as a class action, and Akin Gump did not purport to represent any of the individual tenants. After the damage claims in the first suit were dismissed for lack of standing, Akin Gump filed a second suit as a class action. Two individual tenants were named as class representatives, and the class members were all persons who were tenants of the building when the motion for class certification was filed. For purposes of this appeal, we assume that Akin Gump at that time represented the individual members of the class and had established an attorney-client relationship with each of them. [5] But Ms. Taylor was not a member of the class because she had ceased to be a tenant before the class came into existence. Consequently, the certification of the class did not create an attorney-client relationship between her and Akin Gump, and Akin Gump owed her no identifiable duty, either as an individual or as a member of the class (which she never was). Any agreement with the law firm in which she may have participated would necessarily have been made in her capacity as Secretary of the Tenant Council, and on behalf of the Council only. As far as the record shows, Akin Gump never rendered any legal advice to Ms. Taylor individually and never specifically agreed to represent her. Ms. Taylor states in her reply brief that she was not given proper legal representation by [Akin Gump] in a case in which she was a plaintiff. But, as we have seen, she was never a plaintiff in either of the two class actions because she was never a member of either certified class. Even if we interpret this statement as referring to the first suit in the Superior Court, which was not a class action but was filed in the name of the Tenant Council, and even if we assume for the sake of argument that her being a tenant made her a plaintiff of sorts, her status as a plaintiff necessarily ended when she ceased to be a tenant in June 1987. From that point onward, Akin Gump no longer owed Ms. Taylor any duty with respect to the first lawsuit (assuming that it had such a duty, which we cannot identify) because the only source of such a duty  her tenancy  had come to an end. [6] Ms. Taylor was no longer a tenant, and hence no longer even a potential plaintiff, when the damage claims were dismissed in November 1987. The only arguable assertion of a breach of duty with respect to the first lawsuit is the statement in her complaint that Akin Gump failed to notify [her] as ordered by the court. But, as we have seen, the order to which this refers was an order to notify all members of the class in the second Superior Court suit (the class action); it said nothing whatever about the first suit brought by the Tenant Council. Thus, giving Ms. Taylor's claim as elastic a reading as possible, we can find nothing in it that would impose liability on Akin Gump for anything it did in the first lawsuit. We have found only one case with facts that resemble the ones presented here. In Formento v. Joyce, 168 Ill.App.3d 429, 118 Ill.Dec. 857, 522 N.E.2d 312 (1988), the defendants, a group of lawyers, had filed a class action involving the purchase of some property in the Bahamas. The complaint named several persons as representatives of the proposed class. The trial court dismissed the original claim, but the appellate court reversed the dismissal and remanded the case. Following the remand, the named plaintiffs filed an amended complaint seeking to add several additional plaintiffs and to withdraw the class action allegations. Then, after the trial court accepted the amended complaint, the case was dismissed pursuant to a settlement agreement. Thereafter, Formento and other potential members of the proposed (but never certified) class filed a complaint against the defendant lawyers, alleging legal malpractice because, among other things, the law firm negligently failed to pursue the Bahamas litigation consistent with plaintiffs' interests and negligently failed to inform, notify, and disclose to plaintiffs their rights in the Bahamas litigation. Id. at 433, 118 Ill.Dec. 857, 522 N.E.2d at 314. The trial court granted the lawyers' motion for summary judgment, and the appellate court affirmed, holding that there was no attorney-client relationship because there was no privity between the parties. In his deposition, plaintiff Formento testified that he did not retain the defendants' law firm or pay, or offer to pay, a fee to any of the individual lawyers, and that neither the law firm nor the individual lawyers ever rendered any legal advice to him. The court, relying on that undisputed evidence, concluded that no attorney-client relationship existed. Focusing on the fact that the primary purpose and intent of filing the class action was not to benefit Formento but to benefit the named plaintiffs, who were the lawyers' clients, the court concluded that [t]he act of originally filing a cause of action as a class action suit, without more, cannot be said to clearly indicate an intent to benefit the unnamed members of the purported class. Id. at 437, 118 Ill.Dec. 857, 522 N.E.2d at 317. Although there are some differences between Formento and the instant case, Formento is still the only case of which we are aware that is even remotely close on its facts to the one before us. The pertinent holding of Formento is that attorneys who represented individuals in an incipient class action did not owe a duty to unnamed members where the class was never certified. MALLEN & SMITH § 7.13, at 534 (citing Formento ). By the same reasoning, Akin Gump owed no duty to Ms. Taylor because she was never a member of the certified class, nor could she ever have become a member because she ceased to be a tenant more than a year before the class was certified. Ms. Taylor alleged that Akin Gump was negligent in failing to notify her as ordered by the court. But the court ordered Akin Gump only to notify all the class members about the certification, and Ms. Taylor, having never been a member of the class, was not in the group of persons to be notified.