Suing the Estate's Lawyer....
The final installment of our four-part series of posts on standing and proper parties in fiduciary litigation may (pleasantly) surprise even veteran probate lawyers. In Johnson v. Hart, another 2010 opinion of the Virginia Supreme Court, the question posed was whether “a sole testamentary beneficiary, in her individual capacity, may maintain a legal malpractice action against the attorney for the estate for the attorney’s allegedly negligent services rendered to the estate.” The beneficiary argued that as the sole testamentary beneficiary, she was the beneficial owner of the assets of the estate, and thus permitted to bring a legal malpractice action in her own name. The Virginia Supreme Court disagreed, reiterating that Virginia is a “strict privity doctrine” jurisdiction in legal malpractice cases, and that the “plaintiff must demonstrate the existence of an attorney-client relationship.” Because the attorney in question was retained to represent the estate, not the plaintiff, the plaintiff ultimately failed to show any attorney-client relationship as a “threshold element.”
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