“A legal malpractice action is distinctly different from any other type of lawsuit brought in the commonwealth. A legal malpractice action is different because … a plaintiff must prove a case within a case, since he must initially establish by a preponderance of the evidence that he would have recovered a judgment in the underlying action. … It is only after the plaintiff proves he would have recovered a judgment in the underlying action that the plaintiff can then proceed with proof that the attorney he engaged to prosecute or defend the underlying action was negligent in the handling of the underlying action and that negligence was the proximate cause of the plaintiff’s loss since it prevented the plaintiff from being properly compensated for his loss,’” according to J.W. Hall v. Nalli, No. 771 (Pa.Super. 2017) (unpublished) (quoting Kituskie v. Corbman, 714 A.2d 1027, 1030 (Pa. 1998)).
Therefore, an important question in a legal malpractice action is whether the plaintiff “had a viable cause of action against the party he wished to sue in the underlying case and that the attorney he hired was negligent in prosecuting or defending that underlying case (often referred to as proving a ‘case within a case’),” quoting Poole v. Workers’ Compensation Appeal Board (Warehouse Club), 810 A.2d 1182, 1184 (Pa. 2002); Heldring v. Lundy Beldecos & Milby, No. 397 (Pa.Super. 2016).
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