The Exoneration Rule

The Kentucky Supreme Court affirmed the dismissal of a legal malpractice claim

The Exoneration Rule provides that a criminal defense attorney may not be sued for legal malpractice in a case resulting in the conviction of his or her client unless the client has been exonerated by direct appeal or upon postconviction relief. The rationale for the rule is that the sole cause of the conviction is the criminal conduct of the client rather than the poor performance of the defense counsel. Thus, absent subsequent exoneration, the convicted defendant cannot establish that his attorney was the cause of his conviction. The Exoneration Rule, with slight variations discussed below, is the majority rule across the nation.

For the reasons stated below, we follow the lead of the Court of Appeals and most of our sister-state jurisdictions in adopting the Exoneration Rule.

The convicted plaintiff was an attorney

Lawrence was formerly an attorney and a member of the Kentucky Bar Association. In 2012, he was found guilty in federal district court of violating 26 U.S.C. § 7206(1), a felony offense involving false and fraudulent tax returns which Lawrence allegedly filed between 2004 and 2006. He was sentenced to twenty-seven months in prison and ordered to pay $128,253 in restitution to the United States Treasury.

…the complaint alleged that Lawrence’s attorneys were negligent by failing to comply with a scheduling order relating to the disclosure of expert witness testimony; by failing to object to certain testimony presented at trial; and by failing to move for a bill of particulars. This negligence, according to Lawrence’s complaint, caused the “utter failure” of his trial defense and “subjected Mr. Lawrence to ineffective assistance of counsel.”

But he remains convicted

It is the “but for” causation element of a legal malpractice case that provides the most important justification for the Exoneration Rule. A criminal defendant’s own actions constitute the “sole, proximate, and producing cause of the indictment, conviction, and resultant incarceration.” Stone, 952 S.W.2d at 224. Because the defendant’s own actions are deemed to be the exclusive proximate cause of his injuiy, public policy prohibits him from maintaining a legal malpractice action against his criminal defense attorneys unless he has been subsequently exonerated. Id.

Holding

we adopt the following articulation of the Exoneration Rule: to survive a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim in a professional malpractice case against a criminal defense attorney, the convicted client must plead in his complaint that he has been exonerated of the underlying criminal conviction. He or she need not prove actual innocence, but they also may not rely solely upon a claim of actual innocence in the absence of an exonerating court decision through appeal or post-conviction order. Further, the statute of limitations on the legal malpractice claim does not begin to run until the postconviction exoneration occurs.

Because Lawrence failed to allege that he had been exonerated of his convictions through post-conviction proceedings, the trial court correctly dismissed his legal malpractice claim without prejudice.

(Mike Frisch)