In a relatively well-known case from Colorado, Alan DeAtley faced criminal charges for his claiming grossly overvalued deductions for conservation easements on his land. Unsurprisingly, DeAtley brought suit against the various professionals who worked on the conservation easements including appraisers and tax professionals. His complaint asserts that these professionals misrepresented the conservation easement values and their conduct was not just negligent but rose to the level of fraudulent. (Note, this case had been transfered from federal district court in Colorado to the Western District of Washington)
DeAtley's complaint has now been dismissed. I was interested in this case because without having a lot of details it sounded like DeAtley had gotten some bad legal and accounting advice. DeAtley, however, started out by filing a shoddy complaint (lacking details regarding the necessary elements of the causes of action) and then failed to respond to the motions to dismiss. The motion was granted without prejudice (but not specifically with leave to amend), so we might see the case reopened. DeAtley was represented by counsel here. Makes you wonder… is he bad at choosing counsel? is he just a poor client who does not listen to or pay counsel? will we see another case for negligence against this attorney? Of course, none of those things are really helpful to the rest of us. We will have to look to other cases to assess what types of repercussions land use attorneys might face for poor conservation easement advice.
This order and the complaint are available on Westlaw (2015 WL 134271) and likely someone more saavy with Pacer than I am can find the information there.