{"id":4797,"date":"2004-04-20T21:21:03","date_gmt":"2004-04-21T01:21:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/formerlyknownas\/2004\/04\/20\/lawyers-liable-for-continuing"},"modified":"2011-08-05T14:58:51","modified_gmt":"2011-08-05T18:58:51","slug":"lawyers-liable-for-continuing-a-bad-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/2004\/04\/20\/lawyers-liable-for-continuing-a-bad-case\/","title":{"rendered":"Lawyers Liable for Continuing a Bad Case"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a1306'><\/a><\/p>\n<p><P dir=\"ltr\"><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/ethicalesq\/justsayno.jpg\" alt=\"just say no\" \/>&nbsp; It seems obvious to me, but, the California Supreme Court&nbsp;finally got around yesterday to declaring that &#8220;an attorney may be held liable for malicious prosecution when he <I>commences<\/I> a lawsuit properly but then <I>continue<\/I>s to prosecute it after learning it is not supported by probable cause.&#8221;&nbsp;See <A href=\"http:\/\/www.courtinfo.ca.gov\/opinions\/documents\/S118032.DOC\">Zamos v. Stroud<\/A>, 04-19-04 (New York Lawyer, <A href=\"http:\/\/www.nylawyer.com\/news\/04\/04\/042004i.html\"><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\">Lawyers Can Be Sued Over Bad Cases<\/FONT><\/A><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\">, 02-20-04).&nbsp; George Wallace covered the case at length yesterday at <A href=\"http:\/\/declarationsandexclusions.typepad.com\/weblog\/2004\/04\/id_go_back_if_i.html#more\">Declarations &amp; Exclusions<\/A>.&nbsp; <\/FONT><\/FONT><\/P><br \/>\n<UL><br \/>\n<LI><br \/>\n<DIV><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\"><STRONG>Personal War Story<\/STRONG>:&nbsp;Circa 1990, here in the NY Capital Area, I won a motion for sanctions against a personal injury defendant for trying to shift blame in an auto accident to a motorist who was stopped 200 feet behind the struck car.&nbsp; The lawyers continued the claims for four years after their client had pled guilty to vehicular manslaughter (caused, after he had downed approximately 14 beers and then drove a U-Haul truck over a hill, across to the opposite lane, striking a disabled auto pulled off on the shoulder, killing two and badly injuring a third victim).&nbsp; Soon after winning almost $20,000 in sanctions for frivolousness, I was congratulated on the victory by a prominent local plaintiff&#8217;s personal injury lawyer, who was not connected to the case.&nbsp; However, he&nbsp;shook his head and added that it was a bad result &#8212; bad policy to sanction lawyers for not withrawing a claim after they find there is no basis in fact or law for the allegation.&nbsp;&nbsp; I bet my favorite p\/i lawyer, <A href=\"http:\/\/riverbendlaw.typepad.com\/notes_from_the_legal_unde\/\">Evan Schaeffer<\/A> would disagree, good guy that he is.<\/FONT><\/DIV><\/LI><\/UL><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; It seems obvious to me, but, the California Supreme Court&nbsp;finally got around yesterday to declaring that &#8220;an attorney may be held liable for malicious prosecution when he commences a lawsuit properly but then continues to prosecute it after learning it is not supported by probable cause.&#8221;&nbsp;See Zamos v. Stroud, 04-19-04 (New York Lawyer, Lawyers [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":94,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2926],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pre-06-2006"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kP1R-1fn","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/94"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4797"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4797\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13871,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4797\/revisions\/13871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}