City files first RICO suit against a personal-injury firm over alleged bogus trip-and-fall claims

New York City has opened a new front in its fight against what it calls fabricated personal-injury lawsuits: a federal racketeering case against a Lower Manhattan firm that, prosecutors say, turned street fights and car crashes into multimillion-dollar claims against cracked sidewalks and potholes.

Corporation Counsel Steven Banks and Transportation Commissioner Mike Flynn announced the suit against Asher & Associates, P.C., and principals Ryan H. Asher and Roberta D. Asher in a Law Department release. Gothamist revisited the case Monday with additional detail from the complaint and the defense.

What the city alleges

Filed in the Southern District of New York, the complaint says the firm filed more than a dozen notices of claim and related lawsuits seeking tens of millions of dollars from the city and DOT for injuries it blamed on scooter, moped and bicycle accidents caused by roadway defects — even when ambulance or emergency-room records described different causes in which the city had no role, the Law Department said.

Gothamist highlighted one example: Dwight Marshall sought $1 million after claiming he tripped on an uneven metal plate on a Bedford-Stuyvesant sidewalk, while Kings County Medical Center records showed he told doctors he was hurt by someone with a lead pipe on Thanksgiving 2018. The Law Department release cites other cases, including a $3 million Brooklyn bike claim on Utica Avenue where medical records pointed to a fight, and a Harlem e-scooter claim where hospital staff were told about a car accident.

When the city or other defendants confronted the firm with those contradictions, the cases were discontinued without explanation, the Law Department said. The complaint also says the firm filed parallel suits against utilities and paving contractors over the same alleged defects.

RICO and False Claims

The city is seeking treble damages under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act and under the city and state False Claims Acts, with city False Claims Act penalties of $5,000 to $15,000 per false claim presentation, the Law Department said. A Law Department spokesperson told Gothamist it is the first time the city has used federal racketeering statutes this way against staged accidents and personal-injury fraud.

"Personal injury laws exist to protect actual victims of trauma, not to line the pockets of people looking to make a quick buck off City taxpayers," Banks said in the city's statement.

The defense

Matthew Laroche, a lawyer for Asher & Associates, told Gothamist the claims are baseless and that the firm has successfully represented injured New Yorkers for more than 40 years. "This lawsuit is a clear attempt to chill that work by recasting ordinary, contested personal injury litigation as racketeering, and by grossly mischaracterizing the facts," he said.

Gothamist noted the city paid more than $2 billion in settlements and judgments last fiscal year, according to comptroller data, and that experts it interviewed said a municipal RICO theory is creative but still has to clear heavy procedural hurdles.