Professional Liability (Non-Medical Professionals)

J.J. Johnson, Andy Beshear, Matt Breetz and Whitney Watt

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Stites & Harbison has a 150-year history of engaging in litigation involving allegations of professional liability or misconduct.

We invest time and resources in order to understand the practices and duties unique to each profession. These professions include accountants, auditors, counselors, attorneys, engineers, architects, bankers, real estate professionals, structural inspectors, title agents, mortgage brokers, financial advisors, insurance agents and brokers and the insurance industry as a whole.  Often times these cases overlap with litigation involving the financial services industry, and we handle those types of claims almost every day.

Our work is not limited to the trial of civil suits. We often assist professionals in actions before administrative agencies or professional boards, and work with professionals when incidents occur in order to mitigate or eliminate potential liability.

In context of civil suits, our work begins long before a complaint is filed as we push to prevent filing through argument and—if merited—negotiation. Where complaints are filed, clients receive aggressive, effective and efficient representation.

The attorneys comprised by our professional liability team publish and lecture on issues related to ethics, professional liability and trial practice. Members of our group also participate in a number of bar related activities, including:

  • the former Chairman of the Kentucky Bar Association's Civil Litigation Section,
  • the former President of the Kentucky Chapter of the Federal Bar Association,
  • the former President of the Kentucky Defense Counsel, and
  • the Chairman of DRI's Professional Liability Committee's Steering Committee.

Other team members are active in DRI, the Kentucky Defense Counsel, the Professional Liability Underwriting Society, the ABA's Professional Liability Litigation Committee and the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers.

Experience

  • We obtained multiple summary judgments for attorney clients. The most recent two were defending malicious prosecution actions against lawyers.  Another involved allegedly negligent advice in the sale of a business, in which we successfully argued lack of "but for" causation. That case was affirmed on appeal.  In another matter involving the failure to bring suit on an assault at a correctional institution, we secured judgment on seven separate grounds all finding there was no viable "case within a case."
  • Our lawyers obtained summary judgments for architects and engineers based on the "government contractor" defense. These victories, to our knowledge, were the first of their kind in Kentucky.
  • We acted as lead counsel for the liquidator of one of the largest life insurers in America in prosecuting professional liability claims against the insurer's auditors in a series of suits arising out of the insurer's financial collapse. The auditors agreed to pay $23 million after years of intense litigation that involved mortgage loan loss reserve and actuarial issues.
  • We recently convinced the trial court on the eve of trial to exclude the plaintiff's sole expert witness in a complex accountant malpractice case on a successful Daubert challenge.
  • After being contacted by an insurance carrier about a potential claim against one of its insured attorneys, we were able to convince the claimant's counsel that the attorney not only should not be sued, but was owed a significant amount of money by his former client.

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