Chad Abraham:
"A management conference is scheduled for today in the case of a prominent New York City resident who is suing a former Snowmass Village lawyer for her alleged failure to adequately represent her in a separate lawsuit.
Christine Ferer is seeking more than $2 million in the legal malpractice lawsuit against Snowmass resident Cynthia Tester.
Ferer’s suit against Tester, filed in 2010, says the defendant was representing her in an earlier lawsuit in which Ferer was suing Fenton Construction over allegations of construction defects in the home Ferer and her sister own on East Cooper Avenue.
Tester, who no longer practices law, was handling the earlier case when she was a lawyer for Garfield & Hecht in the early 2000s. When Tester formed her own law firm, Tester & Associates, in 2006, she “offered to take the [Ferer] lawsuit with her to her new firm,” the lawsuit says. “She told Ferer that the case was a slam dunk and advised her that she felt so strongly that the case was a slam dunk that she would do the work on a contingency fee basis.”
The lawsuit against Tester says Ferer was charged for hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees and other associated costs while the case remained in limbo because of Tester’s repeated absences.
Ferer eventually hired two other law firms after Tester withdrew from the case in December 2008. Ferer ultimately lost the lawsuit against Fenton in April 2010.
Ferer is a former commissioner of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and is New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s liaison on Sept. 11 issues. Her lawsuit against Tester says that by 2008, the Fenton lawsuit had been pending for more than five years and that Tester had filed several requests for more time for pretrial evidence proceedings. The trial was continued twice, apparently because Tester was hospitalized for personal problems.
“At no time did ... Tester advise Ferer that her judgment was compromised or that ... Tester & Associates was not capable of handling the Fenton lawsuit,” Ferer’s suit says.
Ferer is being represented by attorney Karen Zulauf of Boulder, while Tester has hired Peter Thomas of Aspen..."
(Read more? Click title. Comment to discuss)
No comments:
Post a Comment