Higgins, Cavanagh & Cooney’s Professional Liability Practice Group has been representing and defending professionals and professional liability insurers in a vast array of fields, including attorneys, directors and officers, real estate brokers and agents, insurance brokers, financial planners, engineers, physicians and other licensed health care professionals.
It is a fact of professional life that litigation has increased significantly within many professions. Often, these cases arise from complex circumstances, transactions and business arrangements.
Higgins Cavanagh & Cooney is one of the few firms in the region with proven experience in all aspects of professional liability defense. Our attorneys have extensive experience handling all types of professional liability claims and cases involving allegations of malpractice, conflict of interest, breach of fiduciary duty, professional misconduct.
Our lawyers also have particular expertise in the defense of attorney malpractice claims involving real estate, banking, estate planning and other business related issues.
We often resolve such cases at the summary judgment stage. However, we stand ready to try any case if it is in our client’s best interest.
Our lawyers have the proven ability to defend a professional liability case through trial and appeal. We work closely with each client in every phase of the process.
Our lawyers recognize the toll such a matter can often have one both professionally and personally. Our approach in addressing all issues of professional liability is to be cost-effective, forceful, and strategic, while being sensitive to the needs of each client.
Representative cases:
– Defending a Rhode Island attorney and his law firm against allegations of malpractice for the attorney’s failure to attach on behalf of his client a valuable piece of property more than ninety days before the landowner filed for bankruptcy. The defense motion for summary judgment, on the ground that the matter was time barred, was denied by the Rhode Island Superior Court. The state Supreme Court reversed and stated in the opinion – at our lawyer’s urging – that the defendant’s conduct was reasonable.
– Defending a large Massachusetts law firm in the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island in a legal malpractice action brought by various international financial institutions. A central issue in the case was whether the lawyers had failed to perfect security interests in valuable collateral relative to numerous loan transactions.
– Defending a Manhattan-based certified public accounting firm in a class action in the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island. The firm allegedly represented falsely that financial statements included in SEC filings or annual reports were in compliance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles and that audits were conducted in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Standards.
