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Lawyer Fined for Soliciting Families of Air-Crash Victims Within Banned Period
New Jersey Law Journal
September 03, 2009
Richard J. Weiner, a prominent New Jersey personal injury lawyer, paid a $5,000 federal civil penalty for sending solicitation letters to families of passengers killed in the February crash of commuter jet in Buffalo, N.Y., authorities announced Wednesday.
A federal statute bars unsolicited contacts by lawyers with victims or their families within 45 days of an air-carrier accident. Weiner admitted in a settlement with the U.S. Attorney's Office in Buffalo that he sent the families letters within that time.
The letters included the line, "please consider giving me the opportunity to sit down with you and discuss your rights with regard to this tragedy." [See full text of letter here.]
Weiner says he sent 12 or 13 letters and that he made the mistake because he was unaware of the 45-day requirement. The New Jersey Rules of Professional Conduct require a 30-day wait. Indeed, the federal law also had a 30-day period until 2008 when 15 days were added.
"I guess my mistake was not reading all the fine print of the federal regulations," Weiner says.
Weiner wrote, in a letter made public by U.S. Attorney Kathleen Mehltretter: "Our firm practices in both New York and New Jersey and thus I feel we will be eminently qualified to handle your case should you decide that you wish the services of an attorney."
The letter is dated March 10, but it is not known how soon it was received after the Feb. 12 crash of Colgan Air Flight 3407 from Newark, N.J., to Buffalo. Weiner does not represent any clients in connection with the crash.
All 49 people aboard and one person on the ground were killed when the plane came down in Clarence, N.Y. The plane was on automatic pilot just before it went into a dive, and the possibility of pilot inattention is under scrutiny in the investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board.
"I read of your catastrophic loss and though I don't know you personally, I want to send you my condolences," Weiner wrote. "When I looked into the crash, I became very upset when I realized this accident should have never occurred except for the gross negligence of the airline and various other defendants including the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey."
The recipient's name was blacked out, but a lawyer who represents the estates of two victims suing Colgan in federal court in New Jersey says he blew the whistle on Weiner. "He solicited my clients and I reported him," says Noah Kushlefsky of Kreindler & Kreindler in Manhattan.
Weiner, of Weiner Carroll & Strauss of Montvale, N.J., has been practicing for 44 years, and his settlements and verdicts in vehicle accidents, medical malpractice and product liability cases include a pile of multimillion-dollar awards. The $11 million award his firm obtained in a car collision case in 2007 was the seventh-largest personal injury win in the state that year.
While he is not known for air crash work, his Web site mentions a $4.25 million recovery in a case for the family of a man killed in a US Airways crash in Pennsylvania in 1994. He also says he won a confidential settlement for a motorist hurt in the 2005 accident at Teterboro Airport, when a plane skidded off the runway, through a fence and across Route 46, striking several cars before crashing into a warehouse.
The law making post-crash solicitations a civil violation was adopted in 1996 in response to what was regarded as an unseemly scrum of lawyers seeking clients among the families of the dead in a TWA flight from Kennedy Airport and a ValuJet crash in the Florida Everglades.
