A federal judge refused on Thursday to disqualify a law firm from representing a nursing facility, recruiting agency and other non-governmental defendants named in a civil rights suit brought by nurses and their attorney. The Suffolk County District Attorney’s office charged the nurses, who quit their jobs over working conditions, with abandoning their posts and putting their patients at risk. The prosecution ended when the Appellate Division, Second Department, issued a writ of prohibition blocking further government actions.
In the civil rights suit, plaintiffs attorneys argued that Abrams, Fensterman, Fensterman, Eisman, Formato, Ferrara & Einiger of Lake Success, which is representing the non-government defendants in the civil suit, should be disqualified on "advocate-witness" grounds because the criminal case was "driven" by the nursing facility and recruiting agency whose attorneys at Abrams Fensterman pressed for prosecution. But in a bench ruling Thursday, Eastern District Judge Joseph Bianco, sitting in Central Islip, denied the disqualification bid without prejudice.
