Wiley Rein Wins Dismissal of $30M Malpractice Suit

Civil Procedure

Wiley Rein Wins Dismissal of $30M Malpractice Suit

Posted May 29, 2008, 07:30 am CDT
By Debra Cassens Weiss

Wiley Rein has won dismissal of a $30 million malpractice suit that claimed the law firm botched pleadings to remove a wrongful-death suit from state to federal court.

Judge Judith Retchin of Washington, D.C., Superior Court said damages claimed in the suit by Blackwater Security Consulting are speculative, Legal Times reports. There is no basis to conclude that a state court will rule differently than a federal forum, she said. "Thus, there is no compensable injury for the alleged legal malpractice.” She dismissed the suit without prejudice to allow refiling at a later date.

Blackwater had claimed in the malpractice suit that federal courts would have been a better forum to defend a suit by four security guards who were killed in Iraq in 2004. The wrongful-death suit is still pending.

The malpractice suit said Blackwater workers are de facto federal employees, but Wiley Rein failed to cite a federal statute giving federal jurisdiction to cases involving U.S. officers. Wiley Rein disagrees that the guards were federal officers.

Retchin said Blackwater had couched “several legal conclusions as factual allegations,” including its assertion that the security guards’ suit was governed by the federal officer removal statute.

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