Default Judgment Upheld in ‘Sins of the Lawyer’ Case
A lawyer’s alleged missteps have left an oven manufacturer responsible for paying a $582,000 default judgment.
A federal appeals court has rejected an argument that Bakery Machinery & Fabrication Inc. should be entitled to relief from a default judgment because of a “special circumstance”—the lawyer’s representations that the litigation was going well, the National Law Journal reports.
“This case is an example of how the sins of a lawyer can be visited upon the client,” according to the opinion (PDF) by the Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Lawyer James Hinterlong of Grand Ridge, Ill., had represented the company in a contract dispute, but he failed to file required disclosures or amended pleadings by the court-imposed deadlines, the opinion (PDF) said.
Bakery Machinery & Fabrication “has sued its lawyer, but was unfortunately welcomed with, not surprisingly, Hinterlong’s lack of malpractice insurance. From our reading of the case, this is the ‘exceptional circumstance’ that BMF suffers: that it cannot recover from an uninsured Hinterlong,” the opinion says.
