In Vahila v. Hall, 77 Ohio St.3d 421, 1997 Ohio 259, 674 N.E.2d 1164, the Supreme Court of Ohio reiterated the elements of a cause of action for legal malpractice: To establish a cause of action for legal malpractice based on negligent representation, a plaintiff must show: (1) that the attorney owed a duty or obligation to the plaintiff; (2) that there was a breach of that duty or obligation and that the attorney failed to conform to the standard required by law; (3) that there is a causal connection between the conduct complained of and the resulting damage or loss. Id. at syllabus. In Vahila, the plaintiffs claimed that the attorneys' negligence in connection with various criminal, civil, and administrative proceedings caused them over $ 300,000 in damages. The trial court granted summary judgment to the defendants because the plaintiffs had not demonstrated a genuine issue of fact as to whether they would have prevailed in any of the legal proceedings in which the defendant attorneys had allegedly been negligent. The Supreme Court of Ohio rejected this approach, explaining: We reject any finding that the element of causation in the context of a legal malpractice action can be replaced or supplemented with a rule of thumb requiring that a plaintiff, in order to establish damage or loss, prove in every instance that he or she would have been successful in the underlying matter(s) giving rise to the complaint. This should be true regardless of the type of representation involved. "A standard of proof that requires a plaintiff to prove to a virtual certainty that, but for the defendant's negligence, the plaintiff would have prevailed in the underlying action, in effect immunizes most negligent attorneys from liability. No matter how outrageous and morally reprehensible the attorney's behavior may have been, if minimal doubt exists as to the outcome in the original action, the plaintiff may not recover in the malpractice action. Except in those rare instances where the initial action was a 'sure thing,' the certainty requirement protects attorneys from liability for their negligence. "A strict 'but for' test also ignores settlement opportunities lost due to the attorney's negligence. The test focuses on whether the client would have won in the original action. A high standard of proof of causation encourages courts' tendencies to exclude evidence about settlement as too remote and speculative. The standard therefore excludes consideration of the most common form of client recovery. "In addition, stringent standards of proving 'but for' require the plaintiff to conduct a 'trial within a trial' to show the validity of his underlying claim. A full, theoretically complete reconstruction of the original trial would require evidence about such matters as the size of jury verdicts in the original jurisdiction. For example, an experienced attorney could testify that juries in that jurisdiction typically award verdicts of x dollars in similar cases. But such evidence is too remote and speculative; the new factfinder must try the merits of both the malpractice suit and the underlying claim to make an independent determination of the damage award. The cost and complexity of such a proceeding may well discourage the few plaintiffs otherwise willing to pursue the slim chance of success. "Other problems await those who do proceed with the 'trial within a trial.' For example, the attorney in the original action may have negligently failed to pursue the discovery that would have insured success. If the results of that same discovery are now necessary to prove the merit of the underlying claim -- and the passage of time has precluded obtaining that information -- the attorney by his own negligence will have protected himself from liability. In such a case, the more negligent the attorney, the more difficult is the plaintiff's task of proving causation." Id. at 426-27, quoting Note, The Standard of Proof of Causation in Legal Malpractice Cases (1978), 63 Cornell L. Rev. 666, 670-71. The court refused to add a fourth element to the cause of action for legal malpractice, which would require that plaintiffs prove their "case within a case." Rather, the court favored a case-by-case analysis based primarily upon whether the alleged negligence caused "damage or loss regardless of the fact that the plaintiffs may be unable to prove that they would have been successful in the underlying matter(s) in question." Id. at 427. The court went on to explain the rationale for this more flexible, case-by-case method: We are aware that the requirement of causation often dictates that the merits of the malpractice action depend upon the merits of the underlying case. Naturally, a plaintiff in a legal malpractice action may be required, depending on the situation, to provide some evidence of the merits of the underlying claim. However, we cannot endorse a blanket proposition that requires a plaintiff to prove, in every instance, that he or she would have been successful in the underlying matter. Such a requirement would be unjust, making any recovery virtually impossible for those who truly have a meritorious legal malpractice claim. Id. at 427-28. The Vahila court cited the case of Krahn v. Kinney (1989), 43 Ohio St.3d 103, 538 N.E.2d 1058, in which the attorney was accused of having failed to communicate a plea offer to a bar owner, and of having failed to appear at an administrative license suspension hearing on behalf of the corporate liquor permit holder. The Vahila court explained that in such instances, whether or not the plaintiff can prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that success would have been achieved in the underlying matter, the plaintiff has already suffered a compensable loss. The court stated that for the plaintiff in Krahn who was never informed of the plea offer, "the injury in such a situation is not a bungled opportunity for vindication, but a lost opportunity to minimize her criminal record" and for the permit holder whose attorney failed to attend the hearing, "the injury is not the penalty ultimately imposed by the commission, but the expenses involved in rectifying the negligent attorney's failure. The permit holder states a cause of action regardless of whether the ultimate penalty imposed by the commission is reversed." Vahila, at 425-26.