Degen v. Steinbrink

Headnote

Attorney and client — negligence — action against attorneys to recover for breach of implied contract and negligence.

Degen v. Steinbrink, 202 App. Div. 477 , affirmed.

Appeal from an order of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court in the first judicial department, entered February 14, 1923, reversing a judgment in favor of plaintiff entered upon the report of a referee and granting a new trial. The action was to recover damages alleged to have resulted to plaintiff’s assignee because of the breach of an implied contract that attorneys, of which said assignee was a client, would file proper chattel mortgages in Connecticut and New Jersey, and a year later make a proper refiling of a chattel mortgage with the register of New York county, and also for negligence in the performance of the attorneys’- duty to their client, the alleged breaches and alleged negligence which are claimed to have caused such damage being: That the defendants in the chattel mortgage filed in New Jersey in 1913 failed to use the proper form of acknowledgment required by the statutes of that state; that in the chattel mortgage filed in Connecticut in 1913 the defendants failed to cover the property described in such chattel mortgage, and that upon the copy of the chattel mortgage refiled in New York county in October, 1914, the defendants failed to place the number and date of filing of the original mortgage, as required by the laws of the state of New York.