ANTHONY S. PIGNATARO, Appellant, v BRIAN R. WELSH et al., Respondents.
Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Fourth Department, New York
[834 NYS2d 917]
It is hereby ordered that the judgment so appealed from be and the same hereby is unanimously affirmed without costs.
Memorandum: Plaintiff commenced this legal malpractice action against defendant Brian R. Welsh, the attorney who represented him in a matrimonial action, and defendant Siegel, Kelleher & Kahn, Welsh‘s law firm. Plaintiff alleged, inter alia, that Welsh engaged in negligent and improper conduct in connection with the appointment of a custodian for certain accounts established for plaintiff‘s children. Supreme Court properly granted defendants’ motion seeking summary judgment dismissing the complaint. “In order to establish their entitlement to judgment as a matter of law, defendants had to present evidence in admissible form establishing that [plaintiff is] unable to prove at least one [of the] necessary element[s] of a legal malpractice action” (Potter v Polozie, 303 AD2d 943, 943 [2003]), i.e., “that [defendants] failed to exercise that degree of care, skill, and diligence commonly possessed and exercised by members of the legal community, that [their] negligence was a proximate cause of the loss sustained by [plaintiff], and that [plaintiff] incurred damages as a direct result of [defendants‘] actions” (Attonito v La Mirage of Southampton, 276 AD2d 454, 454 [2000]). Here, defendants met their burden with respect to each necessary element, and plaintiff failed to raise a triable issue of fact (see generally Zuckerman v City of New York, 49 NY2d 557, 562 [1980]). Present—Hurlbutt, J.P., Gorski, Peradotto and Green, JJ.