A Sense Of Renewal

The Tennessee Court of Appeals affirmed the  judgment in favor of  legal malpractice defendants on statute of limitations grounds based on trial court credibility determinations

This case involves a claim of legal malpractice following the failure to renew two civil judgments ten years after they were first issued. Appellants Doron Rozen and Linda L. Rozen (“the Rozens”) hired a law firm, Appellee Wolff Ardis, P.C. (“Wolff Ardis”), after they discovered that an employee, Jessica Trotter-Lawson (“Ms. Trotter”), and her then-boyfriend, Andrew Burton (“Mr. Sheriff”), had embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Rozens’ jewelry business in Memphis. The Rozens signed an engagement agreement with Wolff Ardis on January 8, 2003. The agreement stated that Wolff Ardis would represent the Rozens and their business, Town & Country Jewelers, Inc., “in the investigation, pursuit, and if appropriate, prosecution of any claim and/or lawsuit arising out of the activities of [Ms. Trotter] and/or [Mr. Sheriff].”

A nearly half a million dollar judgment was secured; Trotter and Sheriff were convicted and imprisoned

Wolff Ardis represented the Rozens again in 2006 to ensure that the Rozens’ judgment against Mr. Sheriff was not discharged after he was released from prison and filed for bankruptcy. The bankruptcy court entered an order on May 8, 2008, that declared that the Rozens’ judgment could not be discharged. On May 20, 2008, the Rozens received a letter from Wolff Ardis stating that “this matter is completed” and requesting that the Rozens pay for the legal services performed for them.

There were communication about renewing the judgment but in the malpractice trial

the trial court found that the Rozens failed to establish the existence of an attorney-client relationship and that the Rozens filed their lawsuit more than one year after they either knew or should have known that Wolff Ardis had not renewed the judgments. The issue of collectability was considered moot by the trial court in light of its rulings on the statute of limitations and the attorney-client relationship.

The trial court’s rulings were rooted in its findings of fact and determinations of credibility. In particular, the trial court deemed parts of Mr. Rozen’s testimony not credible, including his denial of his alleged conversation with Mr. Ardis in 2004. The court found that sticky note reminding Mr. Rozen to call Mr. Ardis credibly existed and that a reasonable person could not then rely upon a conversation and an email from a non-lawyer to establish an attorney-client relationship. Further, Mr. Rozen’s testimony that he believed the attorney-client relationship was established by a call to a legal secretary was not credible. Finally, the trial court found that Mr. Rozen received a letter from Wolff Ardis concluding its representation of the Sheriff bankruptcy matter and received no bills after Ms. Dayne’s email about renewing the judgments. Because of this, the trial court found that a reasonable person that received bills from a law firm in the past would expect to receive them again for future work. In contrast, the trial court found Mr. Ardis’s testimony to be “wholly credible” and determined that: 1) Mr. Ardis and Mr. Rozen had a conversation where Mr. Rozen was told that Wolff Ardis would not renew the judgments; 2) that the Wolff Ardis letter dated May 20, 2008 concluded the relationship between Wolff Ardis and the Rozens regarding the Sheriff bankruptcy
matter; 3) Mr. Ardis and Mr. Rozen had a second conversation in July 2011 where Mr. Ardis told Mr. Rozen that he could contact any attorney he wanted to renew the judgments; and 4) Mr. Ardis did not give Wolff Ardis’s staff the authority to create an attorney-client relationship.

Further

In sum, the evidence presented in the record on appeal supports the trial court’s findings that Mr. Rozen and Mr. Ardis discussed the judgments in 2004 and again in 2011. During these meetings, Mr. Ardis made clear that Wolff Ardis would not automatically renew the judgments for the Rozens. Mr. Rozen was also aware that the judgments were to expire by operation of law in 2013. As such, Mr. Rozen used a sticky note to remind him to call Mr. Ardis about the judgments in 2013. The record also supports that the Rozens consistently received billing statements from Wolff Ardis and that they could reasonably expect to receive them if the law firm did work for them in the future.