Court Opinion

ID: 9795729
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 03:37:09.59119+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:35:25.653560
License: Public Domain

Maupin, C. J.,
with whom Agosti, J., agrees,
dissenting:
The majority correctly states the general rule that damages do not legally begin to accrue in the context of litigation-based legal malpractice until the underlying action has been resolved. In my view, once an appeal is commenced in the underlying matter, that matter is not “resolved” until the appeal is concluded on its merits. I would therefore adopt a bright-line rule requiring a litigant who files an appeal in an underlying action to pursue the appeal to conclusion before proceeding with a malpractice complaint.
I realize that the actual filing of an appeal in the underlying action is not a prerequisite to standing to commence malpractice proceedings. However, the lodging of an appeal is generally, or at the very least should be, based upon a considered decision to pursue the matter further. Once that decision is made, the question of judicial error should be pursued in that forum. In this way, whether the client’s damages were caused by judicial error rather than malpractice is determined prior to the institution of malpractice proceedings. Because the client is not required to pursue an appeal in the underlying matter to gain standing to commence a malpractice action, the rule I suggest here would not, in any way, force litigants with colorable malpractice claims to file and prosecute to conclusion meritless appeals.
As noted, the approach I suggest eliminates the necessity of litigating, in the subsequent malpractice action, a defense that the client’s damages were the result of judicial error rather than malpractice. This is important because that determination will be more objective, the focus in the underlying case primarily being the legal issue itself, while the focus in the subsequent malpractice action may be altered by the fait accompli that the underlying case has been lost.
I would affirm the judgment.