Stephen James Murphy

Stephen J. Murphy joined the firm of Block O’Toole & Murphy in March 2005, after a successful career as a homicide prosecutor in the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office. Mr. Murphy has a reputation for being fearless and tough but fair. His extensive courtroom skills have consistently set him apart from other lawyers. Mr. Murphy is admitted to practice in New York and New Jersey. He handles a wide range of cases, including labor law and construction accidents, tractor-trailer and truck collisions, wrongful death, premises liability, and motor vehicle cases.

With 14 years in civil practice and 22 years overall as a trial attorney, Mr. Murphy has an extremely impressive body of work, regularly returning verdicts and settlements in excess of a million dollars. He has amassed over $350,000,000 in results for his clients, including well over $40,000,000 in settlements every year since 2013. As a result, lawyers throughout New York State frequently consult Mr. Murphy on legal matters and refer their most serious cases to him.

Mr. Murphy has obtained numerous remarkable results throughout his career. Some of the most notable are detailed below.

2016 . . . Three of Top Five Largest Results in New York State

Mr. Murphy was the lead trial lawyer on the second ($9,975,000), third ($7,400,000) and fifth ($5,500,000) largest settlements in the entire state of New York in 2016, according to the New York Law Journal and the Jury Verdict Reporter. The publication also recognized Mr. Murphy for posting the 10th and 18th largest settlements in the state. He had more reported million-dollar results in 2016 than any other attorney in New York State.

Three of the Top 25 Results in All of New York State in 2015

Mr. Murphy was the lead lawyer on three different cases which were recognized by the New York Law Journal in their Top 25 Settlements in 2015. The results that appeared in the New York Law Journal included the #5 settlement ($7,525,000), the #13 settlement ($4,600,000) and the #25 settlement ($3,200,000) in all of New York State. Mr. Murphy was the only attorney in New York State who appeared in the Top 25 results on three separate cases.

10th Largest Settlement in 2014 for the Entire United States

Mr. Murphy and his partner David Scher were able to recover $8,800,000 for a female pedestrian who sustained neurologic and orthopedic injuries in a collision. The landmark result was hailed by the National Law Journal as the 10th highest settlement in the entire country in 2014. It was also the fourth largest settlement in New York State that year. This marks the third time in seven years, and the second year in a row, that one of Mr. Murphy's results was included among the top 50 results in the entire country by the National Law Journal.

The “Good Samaritan Case”

Mr. Murphy, along with his colleague Daniel O'Toole, persuaded a Suffolk County jury to return a record-setting verdict of $32,756,156 on behalf of a 60-year-old man in a traumatic brain injury case. The verdict, covered extensively by the local media, is the largest negligence verdict ever in Long Island and was featured in a cable television documentary entitled "The Good Samaritan." In addition, the result was also recognized by the New York Law Journal as the second highest negligence verdict in New York State in 2007 and one of the top 100 verdicts that year for the entire United States.

Noteworthy Results:

• $32,756,156 jury verdict for a 60-year-old Vietnam veteran who was struck by a reckless driver, resulting in brain damage and other severe injuries
• $15,500,000 settlement for an injured client who suffered a traumatic brain injury
• $9,950,000 settlement for a Buffalo social worker who was struck by a van in a parking lot and had to get her left leg amputated
• $7,525,000 settlement in a Suffolk County wrongful death case for a family after a devastating collision which tragically killed a young mother and child, and left another child with neurologic issues
• $7,400,000 settlement for a union sheet metal worker who suffered a back injury after he fell while working on a construction site
• $7,200,000 settlement in a wrongful death case for the family of a 25-year-old Brooklyn husband and father who was tragically killed in an elevator accident
• $5,885,000 jury verdict in Queens County for a 35-year-old undocumented worker who suffered severe wrist, arm, and back injuries after he fell from a ladder precariously placed on a scaffold
• $5,500,000 settlement just before jury selection for an electrician who sustained a traumatic brain injury after falling from an extension ladder and landing on his head
• $5,500,000 settlement for a 54-year-old Nassau County construction worker who became disabled from employment after being struck by a rotating excavator
• $4,600,000 settlement for a rigger who suffered neck and back injuries that required surgery

Charity Work
Mr. Murphy is a proud member of the fundraising committee for the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. In 2019, he was named the St. Jude Event Chairperson of the Year for the 12 years of effort he and the firm have put in to raise money for St. Jude. Since 2007, Block O’Toole & Murphy has sponsored an Autumn Wine Tasting to raise money for the hospital, whose mission is to cure and end all pediatric diseases. In 2019, the Autumn Wine Tasting raised over $820,000, and overall, together with his partners, Mr. Murphy has raised over $5,000,000 for the hospital.

Honors and Awards
From 2010 to 2019, Mr. Murphy has been named a Super Lawyer, signifying he is in the top 5% of lawyers in the New York Metropolitan area. From 2011 to 2020, he has been honored by the National Trial Lawyers as one of the top 100 trial lawyers in New York State. He has been named to the Best Lawyers in America list from 2013 to 2019, and was also named to the Irish Legal 100 from 2013 to 2016.