Thomas Michael Laquercia

Thomas Michael Laquercia, was born 1945, Saint John's University School of Law alumnus, Class of 1969 and admitted to practice law in 1970 due to service on active duty with the U.S Army Reserve, retiring with the rank of staff sergeant and an honorable discharge. With 49 years specializing in tort defense litigation and appeals. 

In January of 1970, I began doing automobile defense as the assigned trial lawyer for Kings County for General Accident Insurance Company. Much has changed since then, not the least of which the development of the verbal threshold of No-Fault and PIP litigation, but I can confidently state that I have remained constant in my attention to transportation and premises liability and their idiosyncrasies throughout the decades with a willingness to go all the way to verdict in order to protect the interests of our clients. Indeed, in some years, it has been common to take not one, but two defense verdicts for the New York City Transit Authority in Supreme New York with a short span of time and yet begin another that resulted in a stipulation of discontinuance at the very beginning of the trial. Recently, in Supreme New York, I successfully settled a bus alighting case for only $500 during a trial with a woman with a fracture of her right fifth metatarsal which resulted in subsequent ORIF involving the insertion of one screw and six months of recuperation because typically these injuries are very slow to heal.

Since I founded our firm in 1980, we have represented insureds of many different companies, as well as The New York City Transit Authority, MABSTOA, The State Insurance Fund,
The New York State Liquidation Bureau, Long Island Rail Road and New Jersey Transit, The State Insurance Fund, a number of life insurance companies, including the INA Life Insurance Company of New York, Mutual Benefit Life of Newark, New Jersey, John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company, and also property and casualty insurance companies, such as Metropolitan Property & Casualty Insurance Company out of West Warwick, Rhode Island, New York Central Fire Insurance Company, Utica National, and a raff of others. We have also represented insurers through TPA's such as Claims Administration Corporation, Scibal Associates, and Raphael & Associates.
Most importantly, since the start of my career, I have worked on cases involving automobile, premises liability, New York Labor Law and property insurance defense as well as medical products liability, errors and omissions, and subrogation. For example, I have represented the New York Fair Plan during the 70's when the Bronx and Brooklyn were burning with arson while an associate at Abrams & Martin, P.C., as well as being retained by AIG for a major building collapse of the Selwyn Office Building in the Times Square area, which case is highlighted below