Edison Fernando Pesantez Ramon says that on the morning of September 29, 2021, while working on a renovation project of a building on 96th Street in Manhattan, he tripped and fell badly on a ladder.
In the state lawsuit Ramon filed the following year, he describes his injuries as “serious and permanent” and blames the contractors’ negligence. A photo of him lying on his back on a stair landing, with an EMT attending to him, is part of the court file.
As some New York contractors and insurers push back against what they describe as a surge in fraudulent injury claims orchestrated by lawyers and medical professionals, Ramon’s case was one of several in which defendants indirectly asked about immigration status of the plaintiff Undocumented immigrants, who are more likely to be injured during construction projects, are entitled under New York law to workers’ compensation and the right to sue for negligence.
They also play a leading role in many bogus injury schemes, according to two insurers, some lawyers and recent local media reports.
For lawyers representing Ramon, who say in a court filing that he underwent necessary spine surgery last year at a major New York City hospital, the demand for proof of status immigration aims to intimidate him.
The issue came to light in preparation for a trial when attorneys for defendant PNA Contracting Corp., a facade and masonry restoration company and the building’s owner, demanded to know the social security number of Ramon. The contractor also asked for his passport records, an apparent attempt to find out if he was an undocumented immigrant or if he did not have permission to work in the US legally.
Although its role in the work is not clearly stated, a PNA Contracting subcontractor, Melville, NY-based APA Construction Services Corp., is also named as a defendant. Like PNA Contracting, APA denies the negligence claim against it. If Ramon suffered injuries, APA claimed, it was due to his own carelessness and recklessness.
The APA lawyer is the one who put the photograph of Ramon and the EMT in the court file.
Ramon’s attorney declined to provide the Social Security number or passport records, saying the state appeals court has ruled that undocumented workers are entitled to workers’ compensation. The attorneys added that Congress has never passed a law preventing an undocumented immigrant from recovering the cost of medical care and lost wages due to negligence.
“We refuse to subject our client to being intimidated or harassed by the defendants based on their immigration status while the defendants reaped the benefits of our client’s labor,” Subin Associates attorney James W. Coscia wrote in a letter to defendant’s attorney. last year which is now part of the court file.
The bogus injuries and the legal claims, settlements and damages they generate put money in the pockets of immigrants, but mostly enrich law firms and medical clinics and doctors, the two insurers say.
In the recently filed extortionist lawsuits, the Insurers accuse lawyers of employing ‘brokers’ that recruit immigrants and initiate stage injuries, medical care, lawsuits, and workers’ compensation claims that have resulted in settlements or injunctive relief.
The lawsuits use similar language to accuse law firms of orchestrating construction-related injury lawsuits. An insurer, Roosevelt Road Re Inc., accused Ramon’s lawyers, Subin Associates, a New York-based personal injury law firm, along with medical providers, of racketeering by operating a scheme to generate fraudulent claims.
“Many of the plaintiffs are undocumented immigrants who do not speak English and were assisted by the defendants in obtaining false work authorization credentials,” the insurers allege.
A photograph on the case file of Edison Fernando Pesantez Ramon’s negligence lawsuit apparently shows the consequences of the fall in which he injured his spine.
Photo: New York State Courts
The workers, the insurers claim, “were instructed to falsify or misrepresent their accidents and injuries and to receive a myriad of unnecessary, excessive, unjustified and costly health care services.”
Claims must be considered in light of New York’s unique workplace injury insurance environment. State Scaffolding Laws 240 and 241, which date back to 1878, hold project owners and contractors 100% liable when a worker suffers a fall-related injury. In addition to adding hundreds of millions of dollars each year to the cost of construction in New York State, the laws have helped drive several insurers out of business.
On the day of his accident, an ambulance took Ramon, a resident of Queens, to a hospital. There is no evidence that his medical treatment at the time or his spinal surgery last year was unnecessary.
But there is also very little specific information about how his accident occurred. Subin Associates’ amended complaint against the contractors states only that Ramon fell and that some construction material was involved. In a statement made in 2022, the owner of the building asked for details about where, on which step and ladder, and in what way Ramon’s collapse and fall occurred.
An official with Subin Associates, which represented Ramon in 2022 and 2023, could not immediately be reached for comment, but the law firm had issued a statement to ABC-7, a local television station. “Subin Associates LLP,” he stated, “has an eight-decade track record in matters involving serious personal injury. The firm takes its ethical responsibility obligations seriously.”
Partial view of the ambulance and pre-hospital care report on file in Ramon’s claim for his trip and fall injury.
Image: New York State Courts.
The issue of fake injuries was he initially reported last year in investigations from ABC TV-7, which showed videotape of workers lined up on the sidewalk outside a small building undergoing renovation, apparently to simulate the aftermath of the falls. Another report showed workers falling in seemingly fake slow motion.
Another investigation, from the New York Post, in June he also described lawyers and medical service providers employment of immigrants in fraud schemes. That story claimed that Subin Associates was dropping cases and turning them over to other firms after deciding those cases raised ethical issues. Partly as a result of ABC-7 and publication investigations, a new bill was introduced in the New York State Senate in January that, if passed, would a scenic construction accident a crime.
The new lawyer represents Ramon
Subin Associates recently resigned as Ramon’s attorney, court records show, handing the case over to another law firm as the critical discovery phase was about to begin in state court in Queens County .
In this and other cases, Subin Associates asked permission to withdraw from raising questions for Alex R. Malino, an attorney representing the contractors. He told ABC-7 there were “reasons to question” why Subin’s law practice would transfer what Malino said were more than 300 cases to others. However, ENR could not confirm the number of cases transferred out of Subin Associates.
For Malino, the matter is serious because the cases involve “a lot of money, millions and millions and millions of dollars,” he told ABC-7.
The attorney now representing Ramon, Joseph Guardino of Hach & Rose, said his office continues to press Ramon’s claims.
Hach & Rose, he said, “has not received anything to suggest that the claim is not legitimate.”
