5 NJ Attorneys Successfully Fend Off Legal Malpractice Claims Before Appellate Division

In a legal malpractice claim filed by Frank Angrisani against five of his former attorneys and law firms, the Appellate Division granted summary judgment to the defendants because the expert reports submitted by the plaintiff were already found to be deficient by the trial court in another matter.

The Appellate Division decision sorted through a complicated legal history which began with a settlement reached between Angrisani, Financial Technology Ventures, and Nexxar Group. Following that settlement, Angrisani sued his own attorneys for legal malpractice.

He retained two attorneys to sue Larry Orloff and his firm, Orloff, Lowenbach, Stifelman & Siegel. After dismissing one attorney from the case, a defendant in this case, Leo B. Dubler III, of the Law Office of Leo B. Dubler, was his only remaining representation, according to the opinion.

Two other attorneys, Michael B. Galpern of the Locks Law Firm, Arthur L. “Scott” Porter of Fischer, Porter & Thomas, were retained as legal experts in Angrisani’s case against Orloff and the reports they produced identified deviations from the standard of care that Orloff allegedly committed when he was handling plaintiff’s claims, according to the opinion.

Now, Dubler, Galpern, and Porter are being sued by Angrisani for legal malpractice. After the trial court dismissed the legal malpractice claims against Orloff, Angrisani retained defendants Talbot B. Kramer Jr. and Donna L. Freidel of Freidel & Kramer, to move for reconsideration of that dismissal. They, too, are defendants in this lawsuit filed for legal malpractice, according to the opinion.

Angrisani, now appearing pro se, appealed the grant of summary judgment to his former legal counsel.

On appeal, Angrisani argued that the Burlington County Superior Court erroneously applied the doctrine of collateral estoppel to bar his expert reports because “the sufficiency of the proffered expert economic loss testimony and legal malpractice proofs” were not fully and fairly adjudicated during the Orloff legal malpractice case. He also alleged that the trial court’s application of collateral estoppel mistakenly disregarded the claims of defendants’ negligence in precipitating the adverse results in the Orloff litigation, according to the opinion.

“We disagree with both contentions,” Appellate Division Judges Michael J. Haas and Lisa A. Puglisi said in a per curiam opinion.

During discovery, Angrisani provided a liability expert report prepared by Scott B. Piekarsky as well as supplemental economic reports issued by Sobel Tinari Economics Group, authored by Kristin Kucsma, according to the opinion. When the defendants moved for summary judgment, the trial court found that Angrisani “repackaged” the report that both the trial court and Appellate Division had already ruled was insufficient in the Orloff litigation.

“Plaintiff’s argument is not persuasive because he misstates the trial court’s and this court’s decisions in the Orloff litigation,” the opinion said. “In fact, both the trial court and this court clearly determined that the Tinari report was inadmissible to support plaintiff’s claim for damages.”

The appellate opinion further said that the legal malpractice claim was dismissed because Angrisani failed to prove actual damages and that the Tinari report did not calculate actual damages suffered. Without expert testimony to support a claim for damages, the trial court properly found that plaintiff’s legal malpractice claim failed as a matter of law, the Appellate Division concluded.

“Plaintiff next argues that the trial court erred by relying upon the Orloff decisions to collaterally estop him from relying upon a repackaged Tinari report to attempt to prove actual damages,” the opinion said.

Angrisani argued that collateral estoppel cannot apply because the Orloff litigation addressed representation in the FTV/Nexxar litigation but did not address the representation by Dubler, Kramer, Galpern and Porter.

“Plaintiff’s argument is not persuasive because it is based on his contention that ‘the Orloff courts did not reject the Tinari economic analysis itself,’” the opinion said. “However, as explained above, both the trial court and this court in the Orloff litigation determined that the Tinari report was inadmissible to prove plaintiff’s damages.”

The Appellate Division concluded that the trial court was correct in determining that Angrisani could not demonstrate actual damages because, as in the Orloff case, the expert reports were inadmissible.

Counsel for Dubler, Jay H. Greenblatt of Greenblatt & Laube, declined to comment on the case.

Counsel for Porter, Thomas N. Gamarello of Schenck, Price, Smith & King; counsel for Freidel & Kramer, John L. Slimm of Marshall Dennehey; and counsel for Galpern, Michael P. Chipko of Wilson Elser, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.