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In an Arizona divorce, a decree mistakenly listed a $200,000 loan from the wife’s father as just $100,000. Mihalovich, was issued in 2026 and is available through Justia U.S. Because she could not prove she suffered an actual loss as a result, her lawyer then missed a deadline to correct the error, but the Arizona Court of Appeals, Division One, rejected her legal malpractice case.
The unpublished decision, Mikalacki v. Law.
In this case, the court found that the wife had not established that the missing $100,000 would have changed the outcome of her divorce. The appellate court found that she had not proven that the missing $100,000 would have made a difference in the final division of assets. She did not show that the lawyer’s missed deadline was the proximate cause of any actual loss, nor did she establish that she suffered measurable damages as a result.
The case turns on a basic but often misunderstood principle of legal malpractice law. A client must show not only that the lawyer made a mistake, but that the mistake caused a real, measurable loss. That kind of mistake can feel devastating, especially when it involves a large sum of money. But the court’s analysis focused on whether the error actually caused her to lose something she would otherwise have received. Without that showing, the malpractice claim could not stand. The court found that Mikalacki failed on the causation and damages prongs. This is a common trap in malpractice cases. A client may feel wronged by a mistake made by a lawyer, but feeling wronged is not the same as proving a financial loss. The court requires evidence that the mistake changed the outcome in a way that cost the client money or property.