March 2013 - Chet Lukaszewski, P.C., during pre-trial mediation, successfully compels and negotiates a settlement on behalf of the firm’s NYPD Lieutenant client, as compensation for a trip and fall accident caused by broken step, which caused the Lieutenant to fall down a basement staircase during a drug raid, resulting in a broken ankle and lower back injuries.

February 12, 2013 – The Chief Leader newspaper publishes story ‘Pension Boards’ Power Mightier Than Judges’, which reports on two recent Supreme Court victories in Article 78’s brought by Chet Lukaszewski, P.C., challenging disability pension denials, one of a 9/11 NYPD Officer with PTSD, and one of an FDNY-EMS EMT, with a lower back spinal fusion; and also discusses the problem with the pension laws, that prohibits Judges from finding applicants ‘disabled’; wherein Mr. Lukaszewski was interviewed in relation to the cases and the broader issue. (Click here to link to paper’s website)

February 2013 - The Supreme Court, New York County, for the second time, found that the NYPD Pension Fund’s denial of the petitioner’s World Trade Center disability pension application for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder was arbitrary and capricious, and found that the Fund had once again improperly considered the facts and the evidence, following a previous remand by the Court. The petitioner had been in World Trade Center 1 on September 11, 2001, when the first plane hit Tower 2. He and his partner evacuated the 20th-29th floors and were descending an interior staircase when the second plane hit Tower 1 and sent debris and soot down through the stairwell which shook as a result of the impact and explosion. They then gave aid to the injured on the ground floor and escorted civilians from the building to a triage which they helped set up in the Millenium Hotel. Petitioner entered 2 World Trade Center three more times during his evacuation efforts and narrowly escaped the collapse. He was caught up in the soot and debris cloud when the first building fell; at which time he rushed himself and 20 other evacuees to a refuge on Vesey Street. Petitioner’s police car was crushed by the falling towers. He received accommodations for his heroism on 9/11. During his 32 years as a police officer, he had been awarded numerous awards and accommodations. Petitioner spent almost 2,000 hours at the World Trade Center site doing rescue, recovery and clean-up work thereafter. After retiring in 2002, he slowly began to show signs of PTSD, but hid the same and tried to manage the condition on his own for a number of years. However, it eventually became so severe that he had no choice but to seek professional help, and was thereafter provided ongoing psychological care for the serious condition. The Court found that the Pension Fund had failed to comply with its original order in again denying the petitioner’s application, and that it had once again failed to explain or justify its denial. The Court remanded the matter to the Fund for a legally sufficient review in keeping with its decision.

January 2013 - The Supreme Court, Kings County, found the denial by the New York City Employees’ Retirements System, of the line of duty disability pension application of an FDNY-EMS Emergency Medical Technician, who had seriously injured his lower back while carrying a patient on a stretcher, and required a spinal fusion surgery to his lower back, to be arbitrary and capricious; and remanded the application for reconsideration, specifically, so that “in particular the Board should consider the physicality and nature of the Petitioners duties in light of the injuries sustained.”

December 2012 - The Supreme Court, New York County, found the NYPD Pension Fund’s Board of Trustees to have again acted unlawfully, following a previous Court remand, in again refusing to accept the conclusion of their own Medical Board, that the petitioner had developed the psychological condition Somatization Disorder as a result of multiple line of duty injuries, particularly a March 2005 injury in which she incurred hand, neck, and arm injuries. The Court vacated the Fund’s award of Ordinary Disability Retirement and awarded Accident Disability Retirement. The Court found the credible evidence established that the officer’s line of duty injury caused the condition and that the higher level of pension entitlement could be determined as a matter of law.

December 13, 2012 - The New York State Court of Appeals, the State’s highest Court, in a landmark decision, finds in favor of Chet Lukaszewski, P.C.’s client, NYPD Police Officer Eddie Maldanado, and the litigants in the two additional 9/11 NYPD cancer cases with which Officer Maldanado’s case was combined (Bitchatchi and Macri); and orders that each be awarded World Trade Center line of duty disability retirement (and death) benefits. The Court, in a first of its kind ruling involving the ‘World Trade Center Presumptive Law’; found the NYPD’s Pension Fund had failed to rebut the law’s presumption of causation which benefits 9/11 first responders by presuming certain illnesses and ailments, including cancer, to be the result of their 9/11 efforts; with “competent evidence”, as is required by the language of the law. The Justices of the Court put forth a definition of competent evidence which must now be applied by all New York State Courts; instructing that competent evidence sufficient to rebut the WTC Law’s presumption must be affirmative evidence which disproves causation. In its decision, the Court instructed that a conclusory opinion, or a claim of unidentified data, or a reliance on the absence of ‘proof’, will not suffice; and thereby ruled the Pension Fund had wrongly denied the applicants the benefits which they sought, and awarded the same, retroactively to the date of denial. The ruling sets a precedent which will benefit countless sick 9/11 first responders and their families in the future. (Agencies reporting on the decision include: The Associated Press, The New York Times, The Daily News, Newsday, The New York Post, Thomson Reuters, New York Law Journal)

December 2012 - The Court found the actions of the NYPD Pension Fund’s Board of Trustees to be legally deficient, in refusing to accept the conclusion of their own Medical Board that the petitioner had developed the psychological condition Somatization Disorder as a result of multiple line of duty injuries, particularly a March 2005 injury in which she incurred hand, neck, and arm injuries; and in retiring the petitioner on an Ordinary Disability Retirement while denying Accident Disability Retirement. This matter had been previously remanded to the Board of Trustees by the Court to reconsider the issue of causation. The Court in this proceeding awarded petitioner the higher level of pension benefits, based on its conclusion that the Board of Trustees determination was not supported by a rational basis or credible evidence, and that it was able to determine the petitioner’s entitlement thereto as a matter of law.

November 2012 – It was the finding of the Court that the Pension Fund once again acted arbitrarily and improperly under the controlling laws based on the facts of the case, and had ignored the instructions of the Court in previously remanding the case, where the petitioner was found to be disabled, but where it was determined by the Fund, that the disability had absolutely no connection to his dangerous and out of the ordinary line of duty efforts. The Court awarded the petitioner the higher level of disability pension.