UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 11-2225
MATTHEW J. SHORTT,
Plaintiff - Appellant,
v.
IMMIGRATION REFORM LAW INSTITUTE, IRLI; SHARMA HAMMOND, Esq.,
Defendants - Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern
District of Virginia, at Alexandria. Claude M. Hilton, Senior
District Judge. (1:11-cv-00144-CMH-TCB)
Submitted: April 18, 2012 Decided: May 8, 2012
Before NIEMEYER, MOTZ, and KING, Circuit Judges.
Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
Matthew J. Shortt, Appellant Pro Se. William Leonard Mitchell,
II, Tracie Noelle Wesner, ECCLESTON & WOLF, PC, Fairfax,
Virginia, for Appellees.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
PER CURIAM:
Matthew J. Shortt appeals the district court’s order
granting summary judgment to Defendants in his legal malpractice
action. We affirm.
This court reviews de novo a district court’s order
granting summary judgment, viewing the facts and drawing
reasonable inferences therefrom in the light most favorable to
the non-moving party. Bonds v. Leavitt, 629 F.3d 369, 380 (4th
Cir. 2011). Summary judgment may be granted only when “there is
no genuine issue as to any material fact and the movant is
entitled to judgment as a matter of law.” Fed. R. Civ. P.
56(a); see also Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 322
(1986). “[T]here is no issue for trial unless there is
sufficient evidence favoring the nonmoving party for a jury to
return a verdict for that party.” Anderson v. Liberty Lobby,
Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 249 (1986). For a non-moving party to
present a genuine issue of material fact, “[c]onclusory or
speculative allegations do not suffice, nor does a mere
scintilla of evidence in support of [the non-moving party’s]
case.” Thompson v. Potomac Elec. Power Co., 312 F.3d 645, 649
(4th Cir. 2002) (internal quotation marks omitted).
Because neither party quarrels with the district
court’s decision to apply the substantive law of Virginia, we
will do the same. A successful Virginia legal malpractice
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plaintiff must demonstrate: (1) the existence of an attorney-
client relationship creating a duty; (2) a breach of that duty
by the attorney; and (3) damages that were proximately caused by
the attorney’s breach of duty. Williams v. Joynes, 677 S.E.2d
261, 264 (Va. 2009).
Shortt first contends that the district court erred in
finding that his failure to set forth expert testimony was fatal
to his claim. Shortt supports his argument with little
authority beyond his own astonishment that a court could find
otherwise. Virginia law, however, requires expert testimony in
all but the most flagrant of professional malpractice cases:
“Unless a malpractice case turns upon matters within the common
knowledge of laymen, expert testimony is required to establish
the appropriate professional standard, to establish a deviation
from that standard, and to establish that such a deviation was
the proximate cause of the claimed damages.” Seaward Int’l,
Inc. v. Price Waterhouse, 391 S.E.2d 283, 287 (Va. 1990)
(internal citations omitted); see also Lyle, Siegel, Croshaw &
Beale, P.C. v. Tidewater Capital Corp., 457 S.E.2d 28, 33 (Va.
1995) (expert testimony generally required to establish standard
of care in “highly technical professions” such as law).
We do not find that Shortt’s malpractice claims fall
within the narrow class of straightforward malpractice claims
exempted from expert testimony. Cf. Polyzos v. Cotrupi, 563
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S.E.2d 775, 778 (Va. 2002) (expert testimony not needed to
demonstrate realtor’s negligence in offering to sell property
that he had not been authorized to sell); Easterling v. Walton,
156 S.E.2d 787, 791 (Va. 1967) (“The inadvertent failure of
defendant to remove the [surgical tool] from plaintiff’s
abdominal cavity before closing the operation wound constitutes
such an act or omission in the performance of the duty owed to
plaintiff that a layman could infer negligence without the aid
of expert testimony.”). The measure of proper attorney
performance in an administrative adjudication and the duty of an
attorney to advise her client with regard to the scope of her
representation are somewhat more nuanced than a surgeon sewing
up a patient with a surgical tool still inside.
As an alternative basis for summary judgment, the
district court found that any negligence of the Defendants
caused no injury to Shortt’s underlying legal claims because his
claims lacked legal merit. Although Shortt broadly derides the
Defendants’ handling of his underlying claims in his opening
brief, he fails to educate us on how his claims could have been
successfully prosecuted. Even granting Shortt’s opening brief
the benefit of a liberal construction, we find little more than
Shortt’s conclusory supposition that the district court erred
and an invitation for us to comb through the record to uncover
the error. In short, Shortt’s opening brief fails to
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sufficiently identify legal error with the district court’s
order.
Accordingly, we affirm the district court’s grant of
summary judgment. We dispense with oral argument because the
facts and legal contentions are adequately presented in the
materials before the court and argument would not aid the
decisional process.
AFFIRMED
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