LOS ANGELES (Legal Newsline) - A couple whose home remodeling project turned into a multi-year litigation nightmare lost their bid to collect damages from attorneys they accused of botching their lawsuit against the contractor and his insurer.
After a “trial within a trial” to determine whether their lawyers mishandled the litigation, the judge determined Allen Letgolts and Gabriella Plattner never had a valid claim against the contractor’s insurer so there was no possibility they lost money because of legal mistakes. California’s Second Appellate District Court of Appeals agreed, saying their lawsuit “was a lost cause from the start.” Plattner’s attempt to raise a claim she fell down poorly constructed stairs 12 years after the supposed accident also was properly rejected by the trial judge, the court ruled.
Letgolts and Plattner hired Boris Pinchevskiy to renovate their home in 2007, but quickly ran into trouble as Pinchevskiy allegedly performed poor work and finally walked off the job in July 2008. Before beginning the prokect, Plattner, described by the court as “a practicing lawyer,” said she asked her insurance agent whether her home insurance policy would cover problems with the renovation project. The agent said yes, but she was wrong. The fire insurance policy specifically excluded damage caused by “construction activities.”
On Jan. 15, 2008, Plattner either fell down the stairs or didn’t; she didn’t make the claim until 2020. Meanwhile, the contractor abandoned the project, leaving the couple with a half-demolished home after paying him more than $100,000.
Pinchevskiy later went bankrupt, so Plattner filed a claim with his insurer, National Contractors Insurance, alleging an array of unfinished or shoddily completed work. The letter listed removal of a “spiral staircase,” but didn’t say anything about her falling down stairs. She signed the letter “Plattner Law Office” with a different address than her home.
Letgolts and Plattner then hired attorney Scott Marks to sue her home insurance company, her insurance agent and Pinchevskiy, again without mentioning her fall down the stairs or related medical expenses.
National rejected her claims in February 2010, and in her response Plattner didn’t say anything about seeking compensation for injuries from falling down the stairs.
Plattner and Letgolts eventually soured on Marks and hired Charles Pressman of David H. Pierce and Assoc. to sue Pinchevskiy and the insurance companies. Pierce got a default judgment against the contractor in 2015 and tried to collect from National company but by then it had gone defunct.
Plattner and Letgolts then sued their lawyers for malpractice, claiming they delayed going after Pinchevskiy and National so long that they missed the chance to collect millions of dollars in damages. As is typical with legal malpractice lawsuits, the court conducted a “trial within the trial” to determine whether, even if legal mistakes were made, they could have caused any losses to the plaintiff.
The National policy was a nonstandard or “manuscript” policy that excluded Pinchevskiy’s own shoddy work from coverage. In other words, if the contractor damaged someone’s property, he had to pay to fix it himself. These clauses are valid and designed to reduce the moral hazard of compensating contractors for their own mistakes, the appeals court said in its Nov. 2 ruling.
Plattner argued she told the trial judge she had discussed her injuries with a claims adjuster back in 2008 and there was no contradicting evidence, so the judge had committed legal error by rejecting her claim. The appeals court disagreed.
The trial judge didn’t write, “I disbelieve Plattner’s testimony about how she fell down,” the appeals court noted, but the implication was clear. Plattner had never committed her claims to writing and there were no medical bills to support them, the appeals court said.
“It can be unpleasant to write the words you know they will read: `I do not believe you,’” the appeals court wrote, but “gentle words don’t detract from the ruling’s authority.”
The court upheld the dismissal and ordered the couple to pay the other side’s costs.