Chocktoot v. Smith

Defendants, attorneys at law, appeal from a judgment in a malpractice action won by the personal representative of a decedent whom they had represented in an earlier proceeding. The case presents novel issues of procedure in legal malpractice litigation: Who, judge or jury, must decide whether an attorney’s negligence harmed his client, and upon what evidence, when the negligence concerned an issue decided by a court rather than a jury?

The course of events may be briefly summarized. Defendants represented Wesley Wendell Brown in a declaratory judgment proceeding in 1972 to determine whether…