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Malpractice Claim/Mandatory Abstention. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York found it had subject-matter jurisdiction over a legal-malpractice suit by the purveyor of the Aimster file-sharing software. But the court dismissed the malpractice action, citing mandatory abstention. Deep v. Boies, 1:05-CV-1187 (FJS/RFT).
Aimster-owner John Deep had filed for bankruptcy after he was sued for copyright-infringement by music-industry companies. Deep later sued his original infringement-defense counsel ' David Boies and the firms Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP and Straus & Boies LL P' alleging sham transactions intended to misappropriate Deeps' assets and billings for legal services never rendered. The causes of action included malpractice, breach of fiduciary duty, conspiracy, fraud, unjust enrichment and conversion.
The district court did find 'it is conceivable that, if Plaintiff [Deep] prevails in this action, [his] bankruptcy estate would be augmented, thereby affecting the rights of creditors.' But the district court found that all the mandatory-abstention criteria of 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1334(c)(2) existed in the malpractice action. These included: that all of Deep's malpractice allegations were based on state-law claims; that the claims related to, but weren't core to, Deep's bankruptcy proceeding; that Deep had also filed a malpractice suit against Boies in state court which was likely to be timely adjudicated.
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