Konesky v. Keller

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Jury verdicts · Cascade County · after a win in the Montana Supreme Court

Konesky v. Keller and Church, Harris, Johnson & Williams

A legal malpractice verdict against a Great Falls law firm, and $488,291 in jury verdicts for a rancher let down by the man who bought his ranch and by the lawyers he hired to protect him.

Thomas Konesky’s family had worked their ranch outside Great Falls since the 1940s. When he agreed to sell it, one term mattered more than any other: he and his wife could keep living in the farmhouse, rent-free. He hired a Great Falls law firm, Church, Harris, Johnson & Williams, to protect him in the sale.

In 2017 the farmhouse burned. Six days later, the buyer, Kevin Keller, terminated the lease under a fire clause that Mr. Konesky’s own lawyers had passed along for his signature. The sale required fire insurance payable to both men; the buyer instead insured the house for himself alone, collected $175,000, and used it to pay down his own debt rather than rebuild.

Taking on a law firm

Suing a hometown law firm for malpractice is something few lawyers in a small legal community are willing to do. Legal malpractice cases are hard to win: the client has to prove what the lawyers should have done, and that it would have made a difference. We took the case anyway. We brought claims against the buyer for breaking the mortgage and the lease, and against Church, Harris, Johnson & Williams and its attorney for legal malpractice.

Round one: the Montana Supreme Court

The trial court threw out the malpractice claim before experts were even due. We appealed, and the Montana Supreme Court reversed: the attorney-client relationship established the firm’s duty, and the case belonged in front of a jury (Konesky v. Keller, 2021 MT 214N).

Round two: the buyer’s counterattack

The court had already ruled, in July 2020, that the buyer breached the mortgage and the lease. He answered by suing Mr. Konesky and his wife, blaming them for the fire, down to an allegation that she had left a curling iron plugged in. In June 2022 the court threw out every one of those claims.

Round three: the jury

In December 2022 a Cascade County jury heard the case against both the buyer and the law firm. It found that the buyer’s breaches of the mortgage, the lease and the covenant of good faith had cost Mr. Konesky $388,291, and it returned a $100,000 legal malpractice verdict against Church, Harris, Johnson & Williams, the law firm that was supposed to protect him. The firm paid that judgment in full, with interest, within weeks.

Case: Konesky v. Keller, et al., Cause No. BDV-19-0568, Montana Eighth Judicial District Court, Cascade County. Verdict December 8, 2022. Tried by Caitlin Boland Aarab and Samir F. Aarab.