Our law firm, representing only injury victims and plaintiffs, often fights City Hall on our clients' behalf. By "Fighting City Hall," we refer to pursuing claims against various municipalities and governmental entities, such as The City of New York, the NYC Department of Education and other city, town, county, village and state agencies. Other examples of municipal defendants are the Police Department, Department of Transportation, Transit Authority, Parks Department and Department of Environmental Protection.
There are many different litigation aspects of municipal law, such as unique affirmative defenses afforded only to Municipalities. Also, the attorneys representing accident victims must keep abreast of relevant qualified immunity defenses and court rules pertaining to written discovery and depositions. Typically, discovery strategies and trial techniques will also be geared to legal claims against municipalities.
Also, of course, there any many types of municipal cases. Some are newsworthy, such as claims of false arrest, malicious prosecution and police civil rights and misconduct cases, such as Federal and State Court Section 1983 claims. Some are complex, and others are considered more basic. An example of the latter type of case is a defective sidewalk that causes injury to a pedestrian. But, even those seemingly simple cases will involve crucial substantive and procedural rules that require legal expertise.
Not every harm has a remedy, and each set of facts and circumstances needs to be analyzed to determine whether there is a viable legal case. For example, when is a public school liable for a student’s harm, and when isn’t it? Was a student's playground injury caused by preventable negligence, or not? Is there a legal remedy for a student-on-student assault? Or, for a teacher-student sexual encounter?
If there's good reason to fight, we will Fight City Hall on your behalf.
