Plaintiff’s legal malpractice claim against the attorneys who drafted her fiancé’s will accrued when she filed an answer to the will contest brought by the fiancé’s surviving relatives.
In LaChappelle v. Tual, No. W2024-01234-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. July 18, 2025), the plaintiff had hired defendant attorneys to draft a will for her fiancé while the fiancé was in the hospital in Tennessee. The fiancé later died, and after the plaintiff filed a petition to probate the will drafted by the defendants, the fiancé’s brother and father filed a complaint to set aside the will based on the failure to comply with certain Mississippi requirements. The plaintiff filed an answer in the will contest case on May 10, 2021.
The plaintiff eventually lost the will contest case, and an earlier will was probated. The plaintiff filed this legal malpractice claim against the defendants as a beneficiary of her fiancé’s will. The legal malpractice complaint was filed on September 14, 2023, but the plaintiff and the defendants had entered a tolling agreement in July 2022. The defendants moved for summary judgment based on the statute of limitations, arguing that the legal malpractice claim accrued no later than May 2021. The one-year statute of limitations had therefore expired before the tolling agreement was executed, so the tolling agreement “did not affect the timeliness of [the plaintiff’s] complaint.” The trial court agreed, granted summary judgment to the defendants, and the Court of Appeals affirmed.
Legal malpractice claims are subject to a one-year statute of limitations. The statute of limitations begins to run when two criteria are met: “(1) the plaintiff must suffer legally cognizable damage—an actual injury—as a result of the defendant’s wrongful or negligent conduct, and (2) the plaintiff must have known or in the exercise of reasonable diligence should have known that this injury was caused by the defendant’s wrongful or negligent conduct.” (internal citation omitted).
The plaintiff asserted that her legal malpractice claim did not accrue until she lost the probate case, but the Court disagreed. The Court of Appeals wrote that “[b]eing forced to defend the will in response to the Paces’ allegations marks when [the defendants’] allegedly wrongful conduct first caused [the plaintiff] to suffer some actual inconvenience.” (internal citation omitted). While her eventual loss in probate court “may have resulted in additional losses, the discovery rule does not allow [the plaintiff] to delay filing her malpractice claim until all of her damages are realized.” (internal citation omitted).
The plaintiff argued that there was a question of fact regarding when she had the required knowledge of her injury. The Court wrote that the attorney she hired to defend the probate matter had knowledge that “there was some question regarding the legality of the will’s preparation,” and thus that knowledge was imputed to the plaintiff. The Court also looked to contract law, where Tennessee courts have held that “a motion that attacks the legality and enforceability of a contract drafted by an attorney puts a reasonable party on notice that the party has been injured by the drafting attorney’s conduct.” (internal citation omitted). The Court explained that it saw “no reason not to extend this analysis to an attack on the enforceability of a will prepared by an attorney.” By the time the plaintiff filed her answer in the probate court, therefore, she had constructive knowledge that the defendants’ alleged negligence had caused her an injury, and the statute of limitations began to run.
The plaintiff also argued that the statute of limitations was tolled by the defendants’ fraudulent concealment. “For concealment to constitute fraud, there must be a suppression of material facts that one party was legally or equitably obligated to communicate.” (internal citation omitted). Further, the Court of Appeals has previously ruled that it does “not believe that reliance upon erroneous legal advice can operate to toll the statute of limitations.” (internal citation omitted). The plaintiff argued that she was repeatedly assured by the defendants that the will was enforceable, and that the defendants “fail[ed] to admit that there might be an enforceability issue under Mississippi law” when she questioned them. The Court noted, though, that during this time period, the plaintiff was represented by other legal counsel, and she therefore had the benefit of legal advice of a third party. Further, by the time she filed her answer in the will contest case, “she had been provided with sufficient facts from which a reasonable person would have been put on notice that she was being required to take action as a result of [the defendants’] preparation of the will.” Accordingly, the Court found that the statute of limitations was not tolled.
Because the one-year statute of limitations began to run when the plaintiff filed her answer in the will contest case, and because her legal malpractice claim was filed well over a year after that date, summary judgment for the defendants was affirmed.
Identifying the accrual date of a legal malpractice claim can be complicated. Plaintiffs who believe they may have a valid legal malpractice claim would be wise to consult an experienced attorney as soon as possible.
This opinion was released three months after oral arguments.