The Colorado Supreme Court has recently reexamined the issue of whether an attorney can be held liable to a non-client in a legal malpractice lawsuit. In Baker v. Wood, the court affirmed Colorado’s general history of classifying claims of attorney malpractice by non-clients as being untenable. “Historically, in Colorado, attorneys have been liable to non-clients only for fraud, malicious conduct, and negligent misrepresentation resulting in business-related pecuniary losses.” The ruling means that an attorney does not owe a legal duty of care unless there is some sort of an attorney-client relationship. There are many important public policy reasons for having such a strict privity rule. An attorneys liability should not be extended to include an unforeseeable and potentially unlimited number of claims from third parties who they never even represented. The decision by the Colorado Supreme Court can be read here.
See Miles Buckingham, Colorado Supreme Court’s Baker Opinion Affirms Narrow Window of Liability for Attorneys, Nemirow Perez P.C., January 20, 2016.
Special thanks to Professor Jerome Borison (Sturm College of Law, University of Denver), for bringing this opinion to my attention.
