Ladany v. Crookes Hanson Ltd., Unpublished Decision (2-8-2007)

**Worker Wins Legal Malpractice Case Against Law Firm** This case involved a worker named Ladanyi who sued his former lawyers at Novak, Robenalt, Pavlik Scharf L.L.P. for legal malpractice. The law firm had apparently made mistakes while representing Ladanyi that resulted in a personal judgment being entered against him. Ladanyi didn't discover this judgment until November 2003, and he filed his lawsuit against the lawyers in October 2004. The law firm tried to get the case dismissed by arguing that Ladanyi had waited too long to sue them - that the statute of limitations (the legal deadline for filing a lawsuit) had expired. However, the court disagreed. The appellate court ruled in Ladanyi's favor, finding that the statute of limitations didn't start running until November 2003 when he actually discovered the judgment against him, not from some earlier date when the lawyers' mistakes occurred. This made his October 2004 lawsuit timely. **What this means for workers:** If your lawyer makes mistakes that harm you, the clock for suing them typically doesn't start ticking until you discover the harm, not when the mistake first happened. This protects workers from losing their right to sue simply because they didn't immediately know about their lawyer's errors.