On December 8, 2023, Justice Knipel of the Kings County Commercial Division issued a decision in Mawere v. Landau, 2023 NY Slip Op. 34446(U), holding that the law of the case barred a legal malpractice claim, explaining:
The existence of an attorney-client relationship is an essential element of a cause of action to recover damages for legal malpractice. Pursuant to the doctrine of the law of the case, judicial determinations made during the course of litigation before final judgment is entered may have preclusive effect provided that the parties had a full and fair opportunity to litigate the initial determination. The law of the case doctrine is a rule of practice, an articulation of sound policy that, when an issue is once judicially determined, that should be the end of the matter as far as Judges and courts of co-ordinate jurisdiction are concerned. The doctrine applies only to legal determinations that were necessarily resolved on the merits in the prior decision and to the same questions presented in the same case. As it was already determined in this litigation, by the report. of the Special Referee and the order of this court confirming the report, that the Law Firm Defendants had no attorney-client relationship with plaintiff, the cause of action for legal malpractice is precluded under the law of the case doctrine. The cause of action alleging breach of fiduciary duty is duplicative of the legal malpractice cause of action, since both claims arise from the same facts and do not allege distinct damages. At any rate; as it was judicially determined that no attorney-client relationship existed between the Law Firm Defendants and plaintiff, there is no fiduciary duty by reason of an attorney-client relationship, and there is no showing of any other relationship between the Law Firm Defendants and plaintiff which rose to the level of a fiduciary.
(Internal citations omitted).