December 16, 2004

...slips up in a major way in its boring old core function of defending the state in litigation. The result: the state loses its right to present expert testimony and runs into a $42.4 million tort verdict in a case arising from a Thruway accident that catastrophically injured a nine-year-old boy when his mother fell asleep at the wheel and went off the road (lawyers for the family sued on the grounds that a planned guardrail had never been erected). If Spitzer & Co. were a private law firm, would its client have a malpractice claim?