Adjuster not lawyer; Claim not tolled.

The plaintiff  in Bloom v. Aftermath Public Adjusters, Inc. tried to overcome a limitations problem with the tolling doctrine for malpractice claims recognized by Hughes v. Mahaney & Higgins, 821 S.W.2d 154 (Tex. 1991). The plaintiff’s claim involved the conduct  of a licensed public adjuster working for an insurance company; the Ffith Circuit characterized his argument as saying “that public adjusters are actually lawyers in disguise. Bloom concedes defendants are technically ‘non-lawyers,’ but he insists they effectively ‘provide[d] legal services,’ because there was once a time when Texas prohibited non-lawyers from engaging in public adjusting.” The Court was unpersuaded in this Erie case:

“But that was then, and this is now. Even assuming Texas law previously classified public adjusting as legal practice, under the relevant regime, these defendants are non-lawyers who were not engaged in legal practice. By definition, Bloom’s claims cannot implicate the unique relationship that triggers the bright-line rule from Hughes. Only Texas has the power to say where lawyer-ing ends and adjusting begins, just as its courts have the sole power to decide Hughes’s outer bounds.”

No. 17-41087 (Sept. 4, 2018).