Kasowitz Benson Torres' New York office at 1633 Broadway. Photo: Rick Kopstein/NYLJ

Kasowitz Benson Torres' brief representation of a former U.S. ambassador in a legal malpractice lawsuit has spawned a separate malpractice case against the firm, as well as a suit over legal fees.

Kasowitz previously represented Cesar Cabrera, a former U.S. ambassador to the island nations of Mauritius and Seychelles, in a 2016 legal malpractice suit against 70-lawyer Meister Seelig & Fein and founding partner Stephen Meister. The case, after the Kasowitz firm withdrew, was dismissed in May 2018 by U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel of the Southern District of New York.

Now Cabrera has hired another law firm to sue his former attorneys at Kasowitz for $10 million, claiming Kasowitz mishandled the now-dismissed malpractice case against Meister. Meanwhile, the Kasowitz firm this month sued Cabrera for unpaid legal fees of $191,754 arising out of the original malpractice case.

“The malpractice case against my firm was a complete disgrace,” Meister said in a statement. “There never was a case, it should not have been brought and now Kasowitz is getting some of its own medicine. That's my comment, and I hope you print it.”

The claims in the related lawsuits all originate from an unconsummated real-estate transaction in the town of Barceloneta in Puerto Rico, according to Castel's decision. Cabrera's companies retained Meister Seelig in 2013 for a dispute with a developer that had been in serious talks to buy its property in Puerto Rico. Cabrera said he relied on the developer's assurance that it would make an offer when Cabrera turned down another company's offer for $33.2 million. But ultimately the developer cut off all communications with Cabrera.

Cabrera's 2016 malpractice suit against Meister Seelig, brought by Kasowitz, alleges that Meister claimed his prior working relationship with the developer would help drive it back to the bargaining table. But Cabrera claims Meister abandoned work on the case and the firm failed to write a demand letter or take any action to pursue claims, allowing the statute of limitations to expire.

After Kasowitz's withdrawal from the malpractice case in early 2017, Cabrera last year retained Steven Storch, of Storch Amini, to continue pursuing the case against Meister Seelig.

About a year later, in May 2018, Castel issued his dismissal of the malpractice claim against Meister Seelig, finding it to be time-barred. “No reasonable jury could find that plaintiffs timely brought this action within Puerto Rico's one-year limitations period,” Castel wrote, adding there was no evidence that Meister Seelig misled Cabrera about its legal services.

Two Cases Within a Case

Now the Kasowitz firm, which sued Meister on behalf of the ex-ambassador for allegedly blowing a statute of limitations deadline, could be facing the same type of claim.

In late July, Storch Amini, representing Cabrera, filed a summons with notice against the Kasowitz firm in Manhattan Supreme Court, seeking to “recover damages for professional malpractice, breach of fiduciary duty, and violation of New York Judiciary Law Section 487” related to the now-dismissed malpractice case against Meister in federal court. The summons with notice says a default judgment against Kasowitz would result in $10 million with interest.

While the summons with notice doesn't explain the allegations behind the claims against Kasowitz, the failed suit against Meister Seelig offers some hints.

For instance, before Kasowitz withdrew from that case, Meister Seelig argued there was potential malpractice liability on the part of Kasowitz. “Kasowitz's own delay in bringing this action—beyond one year of the date on which plaintiffs' duty to investigate their claims against [Meister Seelig] arose—is the proximate cause of the plaintiffs' loss,” Meister Seelig said in its disqualification motion against the firm. “As Kasowitz waited more than a year thereafter to commence this action against [Meister Seelig] in October 2016, then it may well be liable for malpractice in its representation of plaintiffs.”

In response to that argument, Kasowitz said in court that it “did not commit malpractice.” The firm added, “Even if [Kasowitz] should have known of [Meister Seelig's] malpractice at an early date—and no evidence suggests that it should have—[the Cabrera plaintiffs] could not have been harmed by that.”

For its part, less than two weeks after Cabrera filed court papers to seek malpractice claims against Kasowitz, the law firm sued Cabrera and his companies for unpaid legal fees, seeking $191,754.

Kasowitz, in the Aug. 7 lawsuit, is arguing that Cabrera has refused to pay for legal services in the Meister Seelig case, but has never objected to a specific time charge or invoice.

Kasowitz's suit against Cabrera for unpaid fees also argues that Castel's decision in May 2018 determined that Cabrera's original malpractice claims against Meister were already time-barred by the time Cabrera retained Kasowitz in that case.

In a statement to the New York Law Journal, Kasowitz said, “This dispute arises from our former clients' refusal to pay fees they indisputably owe us for work we did at their request before we were compelled to ask for and obtain the court's permission to withdraw from the matter. Their lawyer's filing of a purported malpractice summons, without a complaint, which has not been served, in no way changes that fact. There was no malpractice here on the part of our firm, as court decisions confirm.”

Storch, Cabrera's current attorney in the malpractice filing against Kasowitz, declined to comment.