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Kenneth Feldman Authors Front Page Article for Daily Journal on New Malpractice SOL Amendment

Los Angeles, Calif. (December 9, 2019) – Los Angeles Partner Kenneth C. Feldman recently wrote an article for the Daily Journal about a new tolling exception added by the California legislature to the statute of limitations (SOL) for legal malpractice cases. The article, titled “Amendments to SOL for actions against attorneys coming in January,” was featured on the front page of the December 6 edition of the Daily Journal.

In the article, Mr. Feldman first reviews Code of Civil Procedure Section 340.6 regarding the statute of limitations for claims against attorneys, and its four current tolling provision exceptions, as well as relevant California Supreme Court cases involving the law and its interpretation. He then looks at the new amendment, which adds a fifth exception that tolls the limitations period for specified attorney misconduct claims pending the resolution of arbitration carried out pursuant to the Mandatory Fee Arbitration Act (MFAA).

As Mr. Feldman notes, the reasoning for this new exception was “to incentivize attorneys and their former clients to utilize the MFAA due to it being a lower cost method of settling fee disputes, while providing clients comfort that a potential future malpractice action would not be barred if the proceeding lasted longer than the typical one-year period from the end of representation.” Mr. Feldman also writes that the new amendment was viewed as entirely “non-controversial” and passed the legislature unanimously. In closing, Mr. Feldman states that he “does not anticipate the filing of malpractice actions … will noticeable decrease due to this new tolling provision.”

Mr. Feldman is the national chair of Lewis Brisbois' Legal Malpractice Defense department. He is a certified specialist in legal malpractice law by the California State Bar, and is chair of the California State Bar Legal Malpractice Law Advisory Commission.

Read the full Daily Journal article here (subscription required).

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