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169 A.D.2d 683

Argila v. Harley

Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York · decided 1991-01-31

Cited by 1 later decisions — most recently June 2018

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“legal malpractice action alleg[ing] that defendants negligently allowed the statute of limitations to run.”

quoted by 1 later decision, including Prout v. Vladeck

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1991-01-31

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¶1Order, Supreme Court, New York County (David H. Edwards, Jr., J.), entered January 10, 1990, which denied defendants’ motion for partial summary judg*684ment restricting the amount of damages recoverable by plaintiffs, unanimously affirmed, with costs.

¶2The plaintiffs in this legal malpractice action allege that defendants negligently allowed the Statute of Limitations to run in their medical malpractice action against a physician and hospital in Greensboro, North Carolina. Defendants moved for partial summary judgment to limit plaintiffs’ recovery to $30,000, on the basis of affidavits from two North Carolina attorneys who estimated that the case was worth no more than that amount before a North Carolina jury. We agree with the Supreme Court’s determination that granting the defendants’ motion would impermissibly usurp the jury’s function. The defendants cite no case in which damages have been "capped” on a motion for partial summary judgment.

¶3We likewise find no merit to defendants’ alternative argument that damages should be limited to $100,000, the amount of an insurance policy attached in New York under Seider v Roth (17 NY2d 111). That attachment had been vacated when the alleged malpractice herein occurred, and accordingly cannot establish an upper limit on the damages that could have been recovered by plaintiffs if a timely action had been commenced in North Carolina. Concur—Sullivan, J. P., Carro, Rosenberger and Kupferman, JJ.

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