Chicago Legal Malpractice Lawyer Blog
After his divorce case concluded Lancaster sued his former attorney for malpractice. The claim included allegations of fraudulent billing and other claims. The lawyer raised the defense of res judicata. Res judicata is a phrase borrowed from Latin which bars a litigant from re-litigating a claim that was previously litigated to judgment. The basis for the res judicata claim was that the lawyer had filed a fee petition in the divorce case seeking a judgment for fees against Lancaster. The trial court awarded fees. The legal malpractice case was held to be barred by res judicata. The court agreed with the lawyer that the claims for legal malpractice could have been raised in the fee proceeding.
Comment: this is a fairly broad reading of res judicata. Courts are often reluctant to allow the res judicata defense in legal malpractice cases because the whole point of the legal malpractice case is usually that the client lost the underlying case because the lawyer made an error. If the courts applied res judicata in every case that the client lost, malpractice liability would be swallowed up by res judicata. Because this particular case contained allegations that the lawyer’s bills were fraudulent after they had been approved by a court, res judicata makes more sense here. In any event, res judicata remains a controversial defense to the legal malpractice action.
Edward X. Clinton, Jr.
Source: Lancaster v. ST. YVES, Tex: Court of Appeals, 1st Dist. 2017 – Google Scholar