Minnesota law protects members of specialized professions such as doctors, lawyers, or accountants from frivolous malpractice lawsuits by requiring plaintiffs to submit a declaration from an expert in the professional field attesting that the claim has merit. Attorneys Eric Steinhoff and João Medeiros recently invoked this law to obtain dismissal of a legal malpractice suit brought against a local divorce attorney.
The plaintiff was a client who had asked the attorney to represent her in a divorce proceeding. Before any papers were filed in court, the client stopped communicating with the attorney. The attorney wrote a letter to the client ending the attorney-client relationship and closing the file.
Two years later, the client sued the attorney for legal malpractice. Steinhoff and Medeiros requested that the plaintiff provide the expert-review declaration. Even after obtaining an extension from the Court, the plaintiff was unable to find an expert to attest that the divorce attorney had committed malpractice. Citing the expert-review law, the Court dismissed the case.