Stand Back – the Lawyers Are Fighting
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

ALBANY – Stand back, New York: The lawyers are fighting among themselves.
A faction of the New York State Trial Lawyers Association, including several of its former presidents, has broken away to form a rival organization, the New York State Academy of Trial Lawyers.
The dissidents are calling for a crackdown on excessive advertising and “ambulance chasing” by some of their colleagues, saying such tactics tarnish the reputation of the entire profession.
They also promise to pay more attention to the needs of lawyers outside New York City and provide continuing education for their members at no additional charge.
The breakaway organization is challenging one of the most formidable interest groups at the Capitol, which spends millions of dollars a year on lobbyists and campaign contributions and manages to block most proposals to place limits on personal-injury lawsuits.
Members of the new group say they share the association’s goal of preserving the tort liability system. But they see an urgent need to enforce stricter standards in their own profession.
“Join other prominent lawyers from across the state who have committed to undertake the fundamental changes that must be made to take back our profession from the ambulance chasers, runners, and fraudulent, misleading, unethical advertisers who disgrace and demean our profession,” the group says in a message posted at its Web site, www.trialacademy.org.
The group was founded in March by four prominent tort litigators: James Duffy of Nassau County, John Powers of Albany, and Robert Lahm and John Cherundolo of Syracuse. Messrs. Powers, Lahm, and Cherundolo are all past presidents of the Trial Lawyers Association.
The group claims 250 members, compared with about 5,000 for the 51-year-old Trial Lawyers Association.
The state Bar Association’s Code of Professional Responsibility prohibits attorneys from pressuring anyone to sue or directly soliciting business from people they don’t already know. But the Supreme Court ruled in 1977 that lawyers have a First Amendment right to advertise their services – provided their claims aren’t false or misleading – making it difficult to regulate their marketing messages.
However, attorneys commonly employ “runners” to recruit clients at hospital emergency rooms and accident scenes. Many others use advertisements that push the boundaries of ethics and taste.
Members of the New York State Academy of Trial Lawyers are proposing to make it a crime to violate the ban on solicitation and, possibly, set up professional boards that would certify lawyers who meet certain standards, including agreeing to limits on their ads.
“We’d like to increase criminal penalties for some of the seedier things that might be going on – ambulance chasing, runners,” a founding member of the group, John Bonina Jr. of Brooklyn, told The New York Sun. “Things like that give lawyers a bad name.”
Mr. Bonina, a partner at Bonina & Bonina, said the negative image of lawyers is bad for his clients because it can make jurors cynical about lawsuits. “Sometimes that gets in the way of legitimate claimants receive proper compensation,” he said.
Officials at the Trial Lawyers Association, known as Nystla, said their members also cringe at some of the advertising they see and hear but don’t know of a legal way to prevent it from happening.
“To the extent that advertising detracts from our image and portrays us in a way that is unseemly or unattractive, we all care about it,” the association’s president, Shoshana Bookson, said. However, she added, “It’s a constitutionally protected right. It’s free speech. It’s free expression. It’s going to be difficult for anybody legislatively or otherwise to set limits.”
Ms. Bookson argued that the association remains an effective advocate for the interests of trial lawyers across the state. “I think we do pretty well,” Ms. Bookson said. “New York stands alone … staving off tort reform in this state despite yearly attacks. There are very few states that can say that.”
“I don’t think they compete on a membership level,” she said of the new group.”I don’t think they compete on a political level either…. I don’t see them as competition.”
A member of the association’s executive committee, David Golomb, attributed the split to a power struggle rather than a difference over advertising.
“Nobody wanted them to leave,” Mr. Golomb said. “These are guys who made enormous contributions to Nystla, but they were insistent they didn’t have enough authority. And unless they were given certain positions they demanded, they would not stay. We were not willing to upset our normal democratic system, which has worked so well for Nystla for over 50 years.”
“We think it’s a shame,” he added. “We’re on the same side on virtually all issues.”
Critics of the tort system welcomed the message of the new organization.
The director of the Center for Legal Policy at the Manhattan Institute, James Copland, argued that unscrupulous advertisements from lawyers can be dangerous. In a recent survey, he said, 38% of physicians reported having patients who had stopped taking their medication after hearing about an alleged danger from a lawyer’s ad.
“Obviously the campaigns are designed to grab plaintiffs for the lawyer,” Mr. Copland said. “But they also are designed to scare the public, and there can be real consequences of that.”
“It could be a very healthy development if you had members of the bar … that wanted to do more self-policing,” he said. “I’ll believe it when I see it, if they’re able to get buy-in from the lawyers who make a living this way. But it’s a noble goal.”
“These guys are onto something,” said a proponent of tort reform, Philip Howard, the founder and chairman of Common Good. “If they want to be respectable plaintiff’s lawyers, they can’t associate in the same company with the people who do these advertisements.”
Mr. Howard said the Supreme Court ruling would not prevent lawyers from regulating themselves.
“Even if there is a First Amendment right to advertise, that doesn’t mean you have to let them into the Bar Association,” Mr. Howard said. “But that hasn’t been how bar associations have handled it. They’ve sort of looked the other way.”