Can You Recover Punitive Damages in a Legal Malpractice Lawsuit?

There may be some cases where you need to take action against an attorney who carelessly or wrongfully provided you with poor legal representation. The experienced legal malpractice attorneys in San Francisco at the Helbraun Law Firm can represent you in a lawsuit against your prior lawyer. 

Although the concept of punitive damages is applicable in a legal malpractice lawsuit, they would only be awarded in certain circumstances. Even though you may be awarded compensatory damages based on what you lost due to the original attorney's misconduct, this award would not include the punitive damages that they could have recovered on your behalf. Nevertheless, you could still seek punitive damages directly from the attorney based on the wrongfulness of their own actions.

Schedule a free initial consultation with a legal malpractice attorney at The Helbraun Law Firm to discuss a potential claim against a prior attorney. We can review the facts of your case and advise you whether you may have a potential malpractice lawsuit.

You Can Recover Damages from an Attorney in a Legal Malpractice Lawsuit, But They Are Limited

In a legal malpractice case, the attorney who you are suing would owe you damages when you can prove that they were negligent or otherwise did something wrong that caused you losses. They would need to pay you compensatory damages for what you have lost because of their careless or otherwise improper conduct. If your lawyer represented you in a civil case, you would presumably be suing them for the way that they handled your case, which cost you the ability to win your lawsuit.

There are limits to the amount of damages that you can recover from an attorney in a legal malpractice case. You may have had a very strong initial case against the original defendant, which could have resulted in the payment of punitive damages had your lawyer done their job properly. However, while you are able to receive compensatory damages from your prior attorney, the court would not order them to pay you the punitive damages that you would have recovered in the lawsuit, even if you had been eligible for them.

The California Supreme Court has previously explored this principle in the case of Ferguson v. Lief, Cabraser, Hyman & Bernstein. In this case, plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit alleged legal malpractice on the part of the class attorney because they did not properly advise class members that they could opt out of a settlement that did not pay punitive damages. Moreover, the class attorney refused to represent those class members in appealing the court's decision to not order punitive damages. When the class members sued the attorneys for legal malpractice, the court found that the plaintiffs could not receive the money that they would have gotten in punitive damages from the original defendants as part of their legal malpractice lawsuit. 

Here, the Court held that it would not serve a valid public policy interest to make the negligent attorneys pay punitive damages for the original tortfeasor's conduct. The entire purpose of punitive damages is to make an example out of someone for their own wrongful conduct. Even though the attorney who represented the plaintiffs in the class action case was negligent themselves, they did not commit the actions of the original defendant, such that it would be fair to make them pay for the punitive damages. This course of action would misconstrue the entire purpose of punitive damages in the first place. Further, it would also be unfair to make an attorney pay for damages that would have been speculative in the first place. There was no assurance that the original plaintiffs would have been able to recover punitive damages. It should be noted that Ferguson is a minority viewpoint, but it is still the law in California. 

You Could Still Recover Punitive Damages from Your Attorney Under Some Circumstances

However, it is possible to recover punitive damages from an attorney in a legal malpractice case based on their own conduct. If the attorney's own actions in the case are fraudulent, oppressive, or from malice, a jury may still award you punitive damages, but they would be based upon what the attorneys themselves did, as opposed to what they could have recovered in a lawsuit. Here,  an award of punitive damages would be consistent with their purpose as expressed by California CIVIL § 3294. They would be directly punishing the attorney for their own actions, instead of making the attorney pay for what someone else did and for which they improperly failed to recover. There is a fine line between the two situations.

Contact a San Francisco Legal Malpractice Law Firm Today

If you have suffered losses from your priorities misconduct, schedule a free initial consultation with the Helbraun Law Firm. You can speak with one of our legal malpractice attorneys by visiting our website or by calling us today at (415) 982-4000.