Ferrara Law Group

Ken Hope _{on Google}

Feb 12th, 2023

After being unsuccessful in settling a fee dispute with a Delaware County attorney, I filed a lawsuit, in a self-represented capacity, against that attorney. Because, in addition to breach of contract, I mistakenly included negligence and professional legal malpractice counts in my complaint, I was required to have another attorney vouch that I had legitimate negligence and malpractice claims. I retained Attorney Peskin to produce the required expert report, and to testify on my behalf as an expert witness to his report findings. Mr. Peskin holds himself out, on his curriculum vitae, to have years of expertise in breach of contract and negligence matters.
Months after filing my complaint on which Mr. Peskin based his expert report, the attorney that I filed the complaint against filed preliminary objections (POs) to my complaint alleging, amongst other things, that my complaint did not plead factual allegations to support legal contentions. The Court upheld the attorneys POs and struck my complaint because it was not specific enough as to what my allegations/claims were. Given Mr. Peskins self-proclaimed expertise in the areas of breach of contract and negligence matters, I feel that Mr. Peskin should have known that my complaint would likely not survive the attorneys inevitable POs. After I informed Mr. Peskin that the Court had struck my complaint, he subsequently issued to me his final expert report which still supported the strickened complaint.
The Court allowed me to file an amended complaint to address the lack of specificity issue. My amended complaint contained just a single breach of contract and no negligence or malpractice counts. I timely provided Mr. Peskin with a copy of my amended complaint which I filed with his expert report attached. Mr. Peskin never revised his expert report to reflect my amended complaint. Instead, his report still contained its original language supporting the no longer applicable malpractice and negligence counts. At the time, I did not realize, being a non-attorney, the future, very negative consequences to my case of the expert witness report not being revised by Mr. Peskin post amended complaint.
Years later, Mr. Peskins expert report was rejected by the Court not once but twice, first by a Court-appointed, three-attorney arbitration panel and then by a trial judge. Even though an admissible expert report and an expert witness to testify at trial was the reason that I had retained Mr. Peskin to begin with, both times the Court ruled that Mr. Peskins report was not admissible into evidence and both times ruled that Mr. Peskin was not allowed to testify. The arbitration panel stated an expert in the context of legal malpractice is not appropriate in this particular matter because of the fact that your Amended Complaint is just limited to breach of contract. The trial judge was more vocal in his rebuke of Mr. Peskins expert report and related testimony. The judge stated that Mr. Peskin should not be testifying because this is a contract action Its not a negligence action. Its not a malpractice actionAnd the expert report really delves into those areas it cant be offered in this contract action, okay, because its not relevant, its immaterial its inappropriate
Mr. Peskin charged me $2,800 related to his 3.5 page expert report despite it being rejected by both the three-attorney arbitration panel and the judge. Mr. Peskin also charged me $2,760 related to his testimony that he was prohibited by the Court not once but twice from providing and, therefore, never provided. In total, I paid $5,560 for Mr. Peskins expertise, expertise which was rejected by the Court. For four plus years, I mistakenly thought I would have an expert report to admit into evidence and an expert witness to testify on my behalf at trial. I found out this hard truth the day before trial.