A Dallas appeals court has affirmed a summary judgment in favor of defendants Strasburger & Price, another firm and three lawyers in a legal malpractice suit.

In an opinion dated Nov. 19,  the Texas Court of Appeals in Dallas affirmed a trial court's summary judgment in favor of Strasburger & Price—now Clark Hill Strasburger since a merger in April—as well as former partner Daniel Lanfear, The Law Office of Donato D. Ramos of Laredo, Donato Ramos and Alfredo Ramos, in a negligence suit brought by former client Target Strike.

Daniel Butcher, a Clark Hill Strasburger partner in Dallas who was managing partner of Strasburger & Price before the merger, said in a statement that the firm is “pleased with the outcome of this case.”

The partner representing the Ramos defendants in the appeal, Katherine Elrich of Cobb Martinez Woodward, could not immediately be reached for comment.

David Kassab of the Kassab Law Firm, who represented Target Strike, declined to comment on the opinion.

Target Strike, a former client of the defendants, filed a negligence suit against the defendants in 2014, alleging they filed an underlying business dispute suit in the wrong state, where a shorter statute of limitations ran out, destroying their $161 million claim.

Target Strike alleged in the malpractice petition filed in state court in Dallas County that the lawyers should have filed the underlying suit in Nevada, where there was a six-year statute of limitations on their claims, instead of in Texas, where the statute of limitations was four years.

In 2015, a trial court granted summary judgment in favor of the firms and the lawyers.

Target Strike appealed, alleging its claims in the underlying case would have withstood the statute of limitations if it had been filed in Nevada, and alleging the question of when the lawyers entered into an attorney/client relationship with it should have been considered by a jury.

In the opinion, a panel consisting of Justices David Bridges, Molly Francis and Elizabeth Lang-Miers found that the alleged failure of the firms and lawyers to file the underlying suit in Nevada could not have caused Target Strike's injuries because the suit was “not proper in that forum.”

The court also found in Target Strike v. Strasburger & Price that the limitations on all of Target Strike's claims had run out before Strasburger & Price or the Ramos firm represented it.

“[T]herefore, no act or omission by the lawyers could have caused any injury to support a legal malpractice claim,” Bridges wrote in the opinion.

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