In 2014 we first wrote about a new and unprecedented rule that if an appeal of the case leading to a legal malpractice action was reasonably likely to succeed, that appeal must be taken or the legal malpractice case is waived. Grace v. Law, 24 N.Y.3d 203 (2014). This rule sprang on the legal malpractice bar without any warning when the Court of Appeals granted certiorari on an unpublicized case and rendered a novel decision in a question of first impression.

The new rule served as another unique legal malpractice roadblock in addition to the gateways of “privity,” the “successor attorney” rule, the “attorney judgment” rule, the ”pecuniary economic damages” only rule, the “effectively compelled” settlement rule and the “settlement as waiver” rules.