Case Summaries

Legal Malpractice

[03/27] Tanedo v. East Baton Rouge Parish School Board
The denial of a motion for immunity from liability under the Noerr-Pennington doctrine, ("those who petition any department of the government for redress are generally immune from statutory liability for their petitioning conduct"), is not immediately appealable, nor does the court have pendent appellate jurisdiction over the Noerr-Pennington issue, so the appeal is dismissed for lack of jurisdiction.

[02/28] Mitchell v. Lyons Professional Services, Inc.
Judgment denying plaintiff's motion to execute a monetary judgment entered, as a sanction for plaintiff's attorney misconduct, is vacated and remanded, where although the district court had more than an adequate basis to sanction plaintiff's counsel and accorded the required procedural safeguards, further findings are needed to support a sanction that falls entirely on the clients rather than principally on the lawyer.

[02/20] Gunn v. Minton
28 U.S.C. section 1338(a), which provides federal district courts with exclusive jurisdiction over patent cases, does not deprive the state courts of subject matter jurisdiction over plaintiff's state law claim alleging legal malpractice in the handling of his patent case because the legal malpractice claim does not arise under federal patent law, where: 1) resolution of a federal patent question is "necessary" to plaintiff's case; 2) the federal issue of the experimental-use exception is also "actually disputed" here; but 3) the federal issue in this case is not substantial in the relevant sense; and 4) there is no serious federal interest in claiming the advantages thought to be inherent in a federal forum.

[01/28] Silas v. Arden
Jury verdict for plaintiff on her malicious prosecution claim against defendant-attorney who sued her for legal malpractice is affirmed, where: 1) case holding that the one-year statute of limitations period of Code of Civil Procedure section 340.6(a) applied to malicious prosecution actions against an attorney does not apply retroactively, where plaintiff's reliance on a two-year statute was manifestly reasonable; and 2) the verdict was supported by substantial evidence.

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