After a large federal banking commission claimed that Al’s client had caused losses in the tens of millions, he developed proof to counter the claimed damages and, through a focused mediation process, resolved the claims without personal exposure to the attorney and without expending all insurance limits — before suit was filed. He obtained unanimous defense verdicts in the trial, and then retrial, of a case against a surgeon in a wrongful death case after New York’s highest court vacated the first verdict and ordered a retrial. The case is a leading citation on the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur in New York’s seminal “Pattern Jury Instructions,” authored by a panel of New York judges.

Al has represented hundreds of physicians, physician extenders, hospitals, and other health care professionals in litigation and through trial for 30 years. He has represented a major pharmacy chain in cases involving medication errors and infusion services claims, and medical physicists in seed radiation injury claims. In related matters, he has represented latex glove manufacturers in U.S. federal court multidistrict litigation and perfusionists in ECMO therapy malfeasance claims. He has tried cases that have been cited in New York’s Pattern Jury Instructions, for use throughout the state, on a key medical malfeasance issue.

Al took over the case and the appeal for a major Buffalo developer hit with a multi-million dollar verdict under New York’s rigid Scaffold Law which, in many circumstances, imposes strict liability. After the appeal resulted in a new trial and clean slate on damages, Al crafted a refined damages defense and in mediating the case in the days leading up to the start of the retrial, was able to get the case resolved — for half of the original verdict. In representing one of the largest construction manager companies in the country, Al won at trial when the jury found that his client’s role was not, as the plaintiff claimed, that of a general contractor — avoiding liability altogether.

Al represented the manufacturer of a key component of a piece of farm equipment in a case involving traumatic amputation. Developing proof through an expert on state-of-the-art design compliance and proper warnings use, Al was able to negotiate an economic settlement halfway through the trial — which later ended with a high-seven-figure verdict against the remaining equipment manufacturer-defendant.

Al was brought in to handle a trial presenting a quadriplegia claim a few short weeks before trial was to begin, with liability already decided against his client. With very few good options, the case resulted in an expected high verdict, but during post-trial proceedings, Al worked with the trial judge and opposing counsel to settle the case through structured settlement for millions less than the verdict — and even well within the exposed excess insurance policy.

Lessors of tractor trailers are protected from the liability attached to ownership of a vehicle involved in an accident by the federal Graves Amendment, a focal point of liability claims as plaintiffs’ attorneys attempt its circumvention to access larger liability insurance limits. Al has won summary judgment for trucking industry clients involved in multiple-fatality accident cases with his discovery keyed to positioning the motions for success.