Legal Question in Legal Malpractice in California

my attorney filed a class action law suit for failure to maintain common areas of mobile home park ,spying ,retaliation,discrimination of disabled and elderly,and other contract issues .after filing the case he became unresponsive to my requests to be kept informed of case status and filings and requests to discus my issues, and dose not return my phone calls or emails. after about a year we received a letter stating we have decided to dismiss the class portion of case and refile as two different cases one dealing with failure to maintain and the other with the other issues, sum of us will be on one or both cases . So i sent him a email asking him when he would refile and who would be on which cases and who did we refer to .After no answers i looked up the case online and found he was going to be sanctioned fore not following mobile home residency law and not responding in a timely manner with case deadlines. So he stipulated to new agreements with the defense and received a fine but failed to tell us about any of his dealings until after the fact. It has now been a month since the dismissal and we have still not been told what he plans to do and my calls and email go unanswered regarding all refiling issues . Even though he took case on a contingency payment plan do you think this is a case of legal malpractice and do you think the state bar would take action in this matter. Thank you


Asked on 3/19/13, 11:33 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys

It is not malpractice until you suffer some measurable harm from the negligent conduct, not just annoyance and aggravation. If you have suffered harm already, before the final outcome of the case(s), which is rare, then you would have a case now. As for the failure to communicate with you, that is a disciplinary offense under state bar rules. So you can certainly file a complaint. You may just want to find another lawyer or do that too.

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Answered on 3/20/13, 12:38 pm


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