Noah H. Kushlefsky - New York, NY

Overview

Noah H. Kushlefsky joined Kreindler & Kreindler LLP in 1987 and is a Partner in the firm. He is a 1983 graduate of Boston University and received his law degree from George Washington University in 1986.

He is admitted to the bars of New York and New Jersey, the Federal District Courts for the Southern, Eastern and Western Districts of New York, the District of New Jersey and the District of Colorado, and the Federal Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. He has also been specially permitted to appear in dozens of state and federal courts throughout the United States.

Mr. Kushlefsky has litigated a wide variety of wrongful death and significant personal injury cases during his career at Kreindler & Kreindler, and is active in the firm's general tort practice, its complex litigation practice and its aviation practice. He has resolved more than 200 cases for $1 million or more. He is also active in managing the firm's day-to-day operations.

On the general tort and complex litigation side of the practice, Mr. Kushlefsky has litigated diverse cases including general negligence, automobile product liability, medical malpractice, toxic and environmental torts, insurance bad faith, tour operator negligence and hunter negligence.

The results he has obtained for clients include an $8.75 million jury verdict against Volvo in a product liability case; a $7.75 million settlement in a school bus accident case; a $15.7 million settlement in a commercial bus accident case; and a $3.3 million settlement in a hunting injury case.

He has earned a reputation as a tireless and relentless advocate on behalf of his clients and has the respect of both co-counsel and adversaries.

He has handled cases arising from crashes involving major commercial airlines, such as:

• American Airlines' American Eagle ATR-72 in Roselawn, Indiana, October 31, 1994;
  
• American Airlines Flight 965 near Cali, Colombia, December 21, 1995;
  
• Tower Air Flight 41 at John F. Kennedy Airport, December 29, 1995;
  
• Swissair Flight 111 near Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia, September 2, 1998;
  
• Egyptair Flight 990, off of Nantucket Island on October 31, 1999;
  
• American Airlines Flight 587 in Bell Harbor, Queens, New York on November 12, 2001; and
  
• Continental Connection/Colgan Air Flight 3407 near Buffalo, New York on February 12, 2009

He was appointed by the Federal Court as a member of the Plaintiffs Committee in the litigation arising out of the crash of Swissair Flight 111. He has also been appointed by the Federal Court as a member of the Plaintiffs Committee for liability litigation arising out of the September 11 Terrorist Attacks.

Subsequent to the terrorist attacks, Mr. Kushlefsky established himself as one of the nation's leading experts on the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, representing more than 120 families in the VCF. He was credited with creating the methodology used by the VCF in rescue worker death cases and lectured extensively on the VCF. He was invited to present at Lloyd's in London regarding The Fund as an alternative to litigation. He was also appointed by the Virginia Attorney General's Office to specially represent its interests in federal court litigation related to the Victim Compensation Fund. He was recently appointed Special Counsel by Southern District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein to resolve a conflict of interest in the World Trade Center Disaster Site Litigation.

Mr. Kushlefsky was lead counsel for all victims of a multiple fatality commercial bus crash on the Garden State Parkway in New Jersey and achieved a global settlement on behalf of all victims. He was co-lead counsel in a successful lawsuit brought against an oil refinery in Wyoming which negligently released toxic catalyst over a small town. He acted as co-lead counsel in litigation arising out of a Greyhound bus crash in 2006 in Elizabethtown, New York.

Mr. Kushlefsky is a member of the American Bar Association (ABA), the American Association for Justice, and the New York State and New York County Bar Associations. He is a Board member of the New York State Trial Lawyers Association and is actively working on efforts to improve New York wrongful death law. He is the editor of the New York Law of Torts, the leading treatise on New York tort law, negligence, products liability law, wrongful death and all other areas of New York tort law.