Labair v. Carey, 2012 WL 6707719. Under the legal malpractice case-within-a-case analysis, the defendant’s legal expert opined that plaintiffs could not have prevailed against their physician and so even if it was negligent for their attorney to have missed the statute of limitation, his admitted omission did not cause or result in any harm or damages since they could not have prevailed anyway. The court held that the defendant’s expert on the legal standard of care, a lawyer, was not qualified to express an opinion about whether plaintiffs would have prevailed in their medical malpractice claims against their physician. In order to prove causation plaintiffs must establish that but for the attorney’s negligence (missed statute of limitation) the plaintiff’s damage or harm (missed opportunity to present their damage claims to a jury) would not have occurred. It is not necessary to prove that plaintiff would have prevailed in the medical malpractice case in order to state a viable legal malpractice claim. An attorney’s negligence is the cause of the plaintiff’s injury if there is an uninterrupted chain of events from the negligent act to the injury. In such cases, proof of causation is satisfied by proof that the attorney’s negligent conduct was a cause-in-fact of the damage alleged, i.e., that the injury would not have occurred “but for” that conduct. Only when the attorney alleges that the chain of causation has been severed by an independent intervening cause should there be any discussion or consideration of whether the attorney’s negligent act was the “proximate cause” of the plaintiff’s injury, i.e., whether the attorney’s breach “foreseeably and substantially” caused the injury. The manner of proof in any type of legal malpractice case will must be tailored to the nature of the loss sustained. The court and the parties shall settle the manner in which the case shall be tried. Regardless of how the evidence is presented, it shall be incumbent on the plaintiffs to show that they more probably than not would have recovered a jury verdict or settlement against the doctor but for the attorney’s negligence, and the value of the claim that was lost. Testimony and evidence regarding damages occasioned by attorney malpractice may not be speculative and must afford a sufficient basis for an award of damages.