A Connecticut Superior Court threw out a jury verdict in favor of the victim of legal malpractice on December 30, 2019. The self-represented plaintiff sued her former lawyer alleging that the attorney took a case for both her son and her against police detectives for false arrest. The lawyer settled the case, but allegedly took the plaintiff’s money from the settlement. The plaintiff decided to sue her lawyer for legal malpractice, but represented herself, without the help of a legal malpractice attorney. She convinced the jury to return a verdict in her favor against her former lawyer. But, at the end of the case, the trial judge overturned the legal malpractice verdict, and dismissed the plaintiff’s case. The judge pointed out that in a legal malpractice action there are certain elements that must be proven, and that the unrepresented plaintiff made the mistake of failing to submit any evidence on the existence of the attorney-client relationship between her and the lawyer who took her money. As a result of this mistake, and likely the mistake of not hiring a legal malpractice attorney, the plaintiff’s lost a legal malpractice case she thought she had won.
