On October 23, 2025, the First Department issued a decision in Peck v. Milbank LLP, 2025 NY Slip Op. 05895, dismissing a Judiciary Law Section 487 claim for failure adequately to allege deceptive acts, explaining:
The cause of action for violation of Judiciary Law § 487 fails to allege any cognizable acts of deception. Plaintiffs alleged that defendants’ commencement and pursuit of enforcement litigation on certain notes was knowingly false and misleading insofar as defendants knew that the enforcement litigation was contrary to the decedent noteholder’s estate plan. Even if defendants indirectly controlled the note litigation, the alleged misconduct — pursuing litigation in (possible) violation of the terms of a trust — is not the type of intentional misrepresentation addressed by Judiciary Law § 487. As this Court has previously recognized, it is not clear what the trust provision means or whether it was even operative before probate of the will. Even if the individual defendant, attorney Georgiana J. Slade, Esq., at some point subjectively believed that the trust provision barred enforcement of the notes, she was entitled to change her mind or to press a different, also-reasonable interpretation in zealously advocating for her client, even if that interpretation might ultimately be found to be without merit.
Plaintiffs separately allege that defendants improperly represented the decedent and his estate despite the existence of undisclosed conflicts of interest. Insofar as defendants never represented the decedent in litigation, there was no court or party to be deceived within the meaning of the statute with respect to this representation. Although defendants did represent the decedent’s estate in court, no qualifying conflict of interest has been alleged. Plaintiffs alleged that Slade’s father shared financial interests with the decedent and harbored personal animosity toward plaintiff, but plaintiffs did not allege that Slade shared her father’s negative feelings or that she knew she stood to inherit the shared investments, even if she was aware that they existed. Nor have plaintiffs explained how having such a shared financial interest would adversely affect Slade’s professional judgment in the context of the note or probate litigation.
Plaintiffs additionally alleged that Slade misrepresented in an affidavit filed in the note litigation that the decedent’s estate plan did not bar enforcement of the notes. But for the reasons explained above, this reading of the trust provision was not unreasonable, even if it conflicted with Slade’s own prior subjective understanding of this provision. That Slade claimed to have a different recollection of the substance of a phone call also does not suggest any intentional misrepresentation.
Plaintiffs also alleged that Slade misrepresented in her depositions in the note litigation and probate proceeding that she was not aware during the decedent’s lifetime of her father’s co-investment in property with him. Insofar as the second deposition was taken after defendants formally withdrew as counsel, it is outside the purview of Judiciary Law § 487. The statements in the first deposition — that Slade had no specific recollection of having any contemporaneous knowledge of such co-investments — were not inconsistent with the existence of two footnotes referencing the co-investments in a much longer memorandum drafted over ten years earlier.
(Internal quotations and citations omitted).