Where plaintiff filed a legal malpractice claim based on an attorney’s advice regarding a contract to purchase real property, summary judgment for the attorney was affirmed because the contract terminated before the attorney was hired, and the plaintiff therefore could not show causation or proximate cause.
In Buhler v. Lefkovitz & Lefkovitz, PLLC, No. M2025-00210-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. Dec. 11, 2025), the plaintiff was party to an installment sales contract to purchase real property. The time for a balloon payment was extended by the sellers twice, but prior to the third agreed upon date for the final balloon payment, the plaintiff informed the sellers that she “could not and would not make the balloon payment.” The sellers denied the plaintiff’s request to extend the deadline again, and the December 31, 2021, deadline passed.
On January 24, 2022, the sellers’ attorney sent the plaintiff a written notice of default. After receiving this letter, the plaintiff hired defendant attorney. When the plaintiff subsequently made installment payments, the sellers returned those funds. Upon the advice of defendant attorney, the plaintiff filed a petition for relief under the bankruptcy code. The defendant attorney stated that his hope was to have the contract ruled an executory contract that could be assumed by the bankruptcy trustee, but that plan was unsuccessful.
The plaintiff filed this legal malpractice action against the defendant attorney, alleging that the defendant attorney failed to advise her to cure the default within ten days of receiving the default notice. The defendant attorney filed for summary judgment based on a lack of causation, which the trial court granted, and the Court of Appeals affirmed.
A legal malpractice plaintiff must prove five elements of her claim, including “that the breach [of duty] was the cause-in-fact of the plaintiff’s damages, and that the attorney’s negligence was the proximate, or legal, cause of the plaintiff’s damages.” (internal citation omitted). The defendant argued that his alleged negligence in not advising the plaintiff to cure her default was not the cause of her damages because, at the time he was hired, the plaintiff no longer had a legal right to cure her breach of contract. The Court of Appeals agreed that the underlying contract terminated, at the latest, on December 31, 2021, the date the balloon payment was not made.
“A party to a contract can take certain actions or make statements that repudiate it.” (internal citation and quotation omitted). Here, the plaintiff stated that she could not and would not make the final payment. The sellers asked the plaintiff to vacate, and they returned two installment payments made by the plaintiff, which both show that they considered the contract repudiated. Accordingly, the Court found that the contract was terminated before the defendant attorney was retained. The plaintiff did not have the right to cure her breach by the time the defendant became involved, so the plaintiff could not prove that his negligence was the cause-in-fact or proximate cause of her damages.
This opinion was released two months after oral arguments in this case.