U.S. District Court Judge Patrick J. Schiltz (D. Minn.) has already given defendants in the Afremov legal malpractice case a presumably chilling assessment of the case from his perspective (saying, “Sulloway & Hollis have huge problems in this case…”).
This week U.S. Magistrate Judge Mayeron (D. Minn.) ruled on plaintiff’s motion to amend the complaint a fourth time to add claims for fraudulent transfer against the defendant lawyers and their law firm. Defendants had hoped that the Court would apply New Hampshire law to such a claim (seeing as how that is where defendants reside and do business). This would have resulted in the claims being time-barred under New Hampshire’s four-year limit for such claims.
After some very thorough choice-of-law analysis (useful to federal civil litigators out there having to go through the somewhat elaborate steps between the question and the answer), Judge Mayeron held that plaintiff would have the benefit of Minnesota’s six-year statute and his claims, therefore, are allowed to go forward.
Ruling on defendants’ motion to compel in the same order, Judge Mayeron also substantially limited defendants’ efforts to obtain information about Afremov’s relationship and communication with his criminal defense lawyers at Kelley & Wolter.