Cosmo Anthony Taormina

I was falsely accused by my roommate for assault and battery. My roommate attacked me, so I only defended myself by blocking his punch and restraining him. I hired Terani Law firm that assured me that this case is very easily won, and they assigned Cosmo Taormina to work on my case. Since this was... a misdemeanor and I had no prior record, they kept telling me that it's an easy case since they had many years of experience in even more serious felony crimes. First of all, Cosmo told me not to show up for court which I found to be very odd, since I was released on O.R. , but I couldn't argue with that. He wouldn't even take the time to meet up with me to discuss the case. A day after my first court date, I called him up to ask what happened since he didn't call me. He told me that I should take a civil compromise and pay my roommate off so that I won't have to face jail time and get a conviction. I had already spent 3,500 dollars on the law firm, which I had to borrow from my sister, and I just couldn't believe that he would advise me to pay the guy. I started to wonder whose side he was on. The alleged victim had no visible injury when he claimed that I punched him 20 times. he refused paramedics when the police arrived. and after 2 weeks he went to the hospital and had x-rays, cat scans, and whatever, which showed nothing wrong with him except maybe his mental state. Cosmo kept telling me that I should hire an investigator and spend more of my money on the off chance that my roommate had talked to his buddies, bragging about the fact that he scammed his roommate out of big money. Nothing that Cosmo said made sense. All I knew was that the court date was kept on being continued as the prosecutor kept giving me deals for lesser sentence if I paid my roommate off, and all this time, Cosmo kept encouraging this, which angered and confused me. I wanted this nightmare to end and I didn't want to face jail time. I almost wanted to do what Cosmo was advising me, but I ended up following my instinct and finally fired him. After that I got a great public defender, and things sped up from there. I had dealt with this for about 6 months with Cosmo, and when I got the public defender, she informed me that the prosecutor cannot enforce the restitution to pay this guy, and she informed me that basically the prosecutors had made some sort of an error. I would think that an experienced lawyer would know that, but Cosmo clearly didn't. The public defender, listened to me and actually wrote notes of all the points that I wanted to make, whereas, Cosmo kept showing me what my roommate wanted, and his medical bills, and not telling me how he could use what he knows to win the case. It was only a couple of months later that the case was dismissed. Now I really would like to sue Terani law firm, the arresting officer, and the prosecutor for wasting my time and money, since I had loss of wages, and I had to spend money to get to court, and overall, gave me a lot of stress over someone's lies. It was 8 months of hell for a misdemeanor charge.