FEATURED CASES

A 41-year-old firefighter who had previously run 36 marathons got cut on his leg during a fire and went to the Fire Dept Medical Clinic. He then was transferred to Bellevue for emergency treatment. He was treated with antibiotics, sewn up and released. What the medical clinic didn't tell Mr. S. or the Bellevue staff was that several years earlier, they had discovered he had a heart murmur caused by a bicuspid aortic valve. The medical significance is that should Mr. S. be injured he had to be treated with a very specific regimen of antibiotic therapy or it could have tragic circumstances. He was not properly treated and sustained subacute endocarditis which caused bacteria to grow like broccoli inside his aorta, causing him ultimately to be completely disabled from the fire department and from any strenuous activity. Thirteen doctors, some Fire Dept staff, some experts, some treating all testified in this case where the jury listened for four full weeks and only needed a little more than one hour to decide.

Dansker & Aspromonte represented a young police officer injured when he was a passenger in a patrol car which was involved in an intersection collision in Manhattan. He sustained multiple injuries including a torn rotator cuff, torn meniscus and herniated discs. As a result of the injuries he sustained, PO F was deemed disabled by the department and retired from the police force on ¾ disability.
Ordinarily, a defendant would be permitted to offset the money received by a plaintiff in that circumstance and reduce whatever award the plaintiff received from a jury for lost future earnings in that amount. However, Dansker & Aspromonte knew that the law applying to police and firefighters does not permit the City to take a setoff and allows the plaintiff to keep the full amount of any recovery for lost future earnings regardless of his disability pension.
The settlement was a good one but could have been more had it not been for the plaintiff himself saying that he had enough of trial and wanted to end it despite Mr. Dansker telling him he was entitled to more and would get it if he continued with the trial.

NOTE: We at Dansker & Aspromonte will fight for you to the end. We will even try to push you to continue if you waiver when we are convinced we can win more.
However, no amount of prodding and cajoling could move this plaintiff to stay the course. He still got a good settlement but it could have and should have been more.

FIREFIGHTER AND POLICE ACCIDENTS

Firefighters keep our city safe. They are brave and devoted civil servants who serve the public in an occupation that is one of the most dangerous in the world. No one needs to be reminded of the valor of the firefighters on September 11th. Both before and since then brave men and women have risked their lives every day to make our world safer and more secure.

Ordinarily, under the laws of the State of New York, workers in general are barred by the Worker's Compensation Law from suing their employer when they are injured on the job. However, under what has been dubbed the “Fireman's Law”, New York City firefighters as well as police and sanitation workers can in fact, sue their employer for negligence because the City of New York opted out of the Worker's Compensation system by providing the above workers with similar but not Worker's Comp coverage.

So, in the case of a firefighter who was injured in an accident in a fire truck where the driver, a fellow firefighter was negligent, under Worker's Comp, negligence of a co employee would be a barred action. Not so in actuality. The injured firefighter could sue his fellow employee and the City as owner of the vehicle.

Often cases involving firefighters are brought against owners and residents of dwellings where a broken staircase or faulty flooring causes a firefighter to be injured. In these situations, the case is not against the Fire Dept but they provide medical coverage for all reasonable and needed treatment arising out of the injuries sustained on the job.

Dansker & Aspromonte have represented many firefighters over the years in a variety of cases. The featured case was extraordinary because the suit was against the Fire Department and the City for failing to properly treat an injured firefighter in what turned out to be a medical malpractice case.

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