No Direct Authority On Point, But Reasoning From One Decision Drove The Conclusion.
Lee v. Newman, Case No. E073745 (4th Dist., Div. 2 Mar. 4, 2021) (unpublished), a messy attorney-client retainer agreement/conversion dispute, is noteworthy for one issue which we found to be of interest. There, a client argued that an attorney’s contingency agreement was void because it failed to include magic language that the contingency agreement was negotiable—a solid argument. However, client sued after the one-year statute of limitations governing legal malpractice claims with respect to voiding the agreement. (Code Civ. Proc., §340.6(a).) Although neither party cited, nor could the appellate court locate, any authority that directly addressed the issue, the 4/2 DCA agreed that the voidable claim was governed by the 1-year SOL because it arose from a breach of an attorney’s professional duties—adopting analogous reasoning from Foxen v. Carpenter, 6 Cal.App.5th 284, 288, 291-292 (2016) in the process.