Opinion
2002-05422
Argued March 18, 2003.
April 14, 2003.
In an action, inter alia, to recover damages for legal malpractice and breach of fiduciary duty, the plaintiffs appeal from an order of the Supreme Court, Westchester County (Bellantoni, J.), entered March 28, 2002, which granted the motion of the defendant Donald S. Klein to dismiss the complaint insofar as asserted against him for failure to state a cause of action.
Giaimo Vreeburg, P.C., Kew Gardens, N.Y. (Joseph O. Giaimo of counsel), for appellants.
Rivkin Radler LLP, Uniondale, N.Y. (Evan H. Krinick, Cheryl F. Korman, Harris J. Zakarin, and Carol A. Lastorino of counsel), for respondent.
Before: SANDRA J. FEUERSTEIN, J.P., HOWARD MILLER, SANDRA L. TOWNES, WILLIAM F. MASTRO, JJ.
DECISION ORDER
ORDERED that the order is affirmed, with costs.
It is well established that, with respect to attorney malpractice, absent fraud, collusion, malicious acts, or other special circumstances, an attorney is not liable to third parties, not in privity, for harm caused by professional negligence (see Conti v. Polizzotto, 243 A.D.2d 672; Council Commerce Corp. v. Schwartz, Sachs Kamhi, 144 A.D.2d 422). Construing the allegations of the complaint in the light most favorable to the plaintiffs, as we must on a motion pursuant to CPLR 3211 to dismiss for failure to state a cause of action (see Leon v. Martinez, 84 N.Y.2d 83), we agree with the Supreme Court that the plaintiffs failed to allege specific facts from which the existence of privity between the parties could be inferred. Here, the defendant Donald S. Klein was retained as the attorney for the administrator of the estate of Jack Rovello and, as such, had no attorney-client relationship with the beneficiaries of the estate (see Kramer v. Belfi, 106 A.D.2d 615; Cherry v. Mallery, 280 A.D.2d 860; Cherry v. Decker, 280 A.D.2d 867). Accordingly, the Supreme Court properly dismissed the complaint insofar as asserted against Klein.
In light of the foregoing, we need not address the plaintiffs' remaining contention.
FEUERSTEIN, J.P., H. MILLER, TOWNES and MASTRO, JJ., concur.