Court Opinion

ID: 9641114
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:23:23.962749+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:35.114272
License: Public Domain

L. HAND, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
The lien created by section 475 of the New York Judiciary Law dates from the commencement of a legal proceeding and is in favor only of the attorney .at law who appears. The Customs Court may indeed be a court within the meaning of that section, and it sits within the state, but an attorney appearing in it need not be an attorney at law of New York or of any other state. Brooks was indeed an attorney at law of New York and he appeared, but the services which he rendered did not require an attorney at law. I doubt if an attorney at law gets a lien except for services as such; that he is secured merely because of his office. So far as the courts of New York have declared themselves at all, they seem to have taken this view. Flint v. Yan Dusen, 26 Hun (N. Y.) 606; Tynan v. Mart, 53 Misc. Rep. 49, 103. N. Y. S. 1033; Duringshoff v. O. B. Coates & Co., 93 Misc. Rep. 485, 157 N. Y. S. 230. Flint v. Van Dusen was apparently recognized as good law in Re Regan, 167 N. Y. 338, 342, 60 N. E. 658, though not expressly upon this point.
But if I am wrong about that, and the services were those of an attorney at law, I cannot see how the plaintiff can escape the effect of section 270 of the New York Penal Law, which forbids any one to make a business of furnishing attorneys to render legal services. Stern certainly furnished the plaintiff as an attorney to render the services, whatever they were, and as he was in the habit of making such contracts he was in the business of doing so. People v. Meola, 193 App. Div. 487, 184 N. Y. S. 353. The plaintiff sues only under Stem’s agreement; he is in substance a partial assignee of Stem’s obligation against the defendant. He does not sue on a quantum meruit and could not. Hence whatever makes unlawful the contract between Stern and the defendant defeats him. Thus he is in the dilemma propounded by the defendant: Either the services were not those of an attorney at law, and there was no lien; or the agreement was unlawful, and there was no pay. For these reasons I think the decree below was right.