What Damages are Recoverable in Legal Malpractice? скачать в хорошем качестве

What Damages are Recoverable in Legal Malpractice?

Recovering damages in legal malpractice. Good afternoon, my name is Neil Burns and I've been asked to talk today about recovering damages in legal malpractice cases and how that works and how that fits in with legal malpractice in and of itself. So it's a good question and it's not a super clear answer in some instances. In some instances you have a case of legal malpractice, you win, collect the damages, the money from the attorney, the attorney's insurance that is. In some cases. It's very questionable whether you can recover damages. For example, an attorney blows a statute of limitations, you think you have a great case. Attorney didn't communicate with you, didn't do what you said he or she should do. You think you have a great case, but you weren't damaged. You weren't injured. You don't have money damages. For example, somebody rear ends you on the highway, clear liability. They clearly did it. They were drunk. They were obnoxious. You get out of your car. There's no damage to your vehicle. There's no damage to your body. They were negligent, yeah, but you don't have a damages case. They're a jerk, yeah, maybe they should get arrested for drunk driving, but you don't have a case for damages. So, recovering damages requires a few things. First of all, there was legal malpractice. There was a duty, a breach of duty, and that the cause of your damage was that breach of duty. Then we look at the important things. What are the damages? Sometimes it's crystal clear. In the car accident example, it's the amount of money to fix your car, or to fix, for a pain and suffering case if you have a broken bone or a scar. Serious car accident cases have a lot of damages, a lot of injuries. So what are your damages? Then the legal malpractice, how do you recover the damages? Is there insurance? Does the attorney have money on his or her own? It's hard to get money out of attorneys, even if you think they own a house, that their wife has a big shot job, and their husband is president of a company. It's hard to get damages from someone individually. Insurance companies have money, they typically have a policy, and you can get the exact amount of the policy, whether it's a full policy or a declining policy, that is, it goes down per the fees. So you can recover those damages. But you have to look back at, were you going to recover in the underlying case? If you had a case against someone that had no money, that you were never going to get damages from, or that there weren't any damages. There's no damage. Or, you were going to win a million dollars in the underlying case, the attorney screwed up, but it was against somebody that was bankrupt. You were never going to get that money. So it's a complicated answer, and if you think that your attorney committed malpractice and you're a victim of that malpractice, call us. It's a free initial consultation. We want to help you. We will help you. We're aggressive and we're effective. We really care about you. So give us a call. Burns and Jain, 617-227-7423. Thank you.