Boardmaster Corp. v. Glass

ORS 479.820 does not allow a county to disconnect electrical service because a failure to obtain a permit is not necessarily a failure to comply with minimum safety standards. Therefore, a grant of summary judgment for a malpractice claim based on a contrary understanding of that statute is inappropriate.

Plaintiff challenges the court’s grant of defendant attorney’s motion for summary judgment in a malpractice action. The malpractice claim came about because the attorney mistakenly informed his client that the tortious act at the heart of the action was not a discrete, harm-producing act, but rather that it was an ongoing tortious act and would therefore not run afoul of the statute of limitations. In the lower court, the attorney was granted summary judgment due to his argument that the plaintiff county could not prove that they actually suffered from the malpractice because they would have not prevailed in the underlying action. The Court, in determining whether the lower court was correct in concluding that there was no genuine issue of material fact and the moving party was entitled to prevail as a matter of law, decided that the plaintiff could have prevailed in the lower court because that court misapplied the statute at issue in the underlying legal suit. Reversed and remanded.