Jury must evaluate credibility of parties' account of meeting to determine statute of limitations
Norman Hubert and several other investors sued their attorneys, Mayer Morganroth and his firm, alleging that the attorneys "dropped the ball" in collecting a judgment against the Ponzi scheme manipulators who swindled them out of several million dollars. The attorneys achieved a judgment against the investment advisers and then a meeeting was held to assess whether the judgment could be collected. The attorneys claimed that the investors did not want to pay for further collection services. The investors claimed that the meeting was simply an interim step in the Morganroths' existing duty to them.
The Court held that the conflicting interpretations of the meeting must be evaluated by the jury: if the investors' understanding of the meeting is correct, the statute of limitations did not run on a claim against the attorneys because a suit against them was filed within two years of the meeting. If the meeting constituted the commencement of a new potential engagement, then the two-year statute of limitations on Morganroths' prior representation had run before the malpractice suit was filed.