Thirty Year Old Medical Malpractice Case is Now Legal Malpractice Case

An appellate court in New York has allowed a client to sue her lawyers over her her 30 year old medical malpractice case even though the lawyers say they fired the client 3 years before she fild her legal malpractice suit.  Generally, the statute of limitations bars a person from pursuing a claim if the suit is not timely filed.  In some states, like Kentucky, the statute doesn't start to run when the malpractice occurs, but when the attorney-client relationship terminates.  So, for example, if a lawyer failed to file your car accident case but didn't tell you for three years, the statute would be "tolled" until you learned of the malpractice (the discovery rule) and then terminated the relationship. 
They New York court determined that even though the claim was three years old, the lawyers never clearly indicated to the client that they were not going to be pursing the case.  Because the relationship was never clearly terminated, the court held that the client could go forward with her lawsuit for the lawyers failing to properly file her medical negligence suit.