Disclaimer and attorney advertising

Every page on this site describes the law in general terms. Whether you have a claim, against whom, and by when, turns on specific things: exactly what happened and who saw it, which agency employed the officers, what the criminal court did with any charge, what the medical records say, what the body-worn camera shows, and which state's rules apply. General information cannot account for any of that.

Do not file, sign, skip a deadline, give a statement, or settle anything based on something you read here. Talk to a lawyer about your own facts. If a criminal charge is pending from the same incident, talk to your criminal defense lawyer before you say or write anything about the arrest, including to us.

About the deadline tool

The deadline tool on this site is an educational aid. It applies general limitation and notice rules, each drawn from a statute or a published decision, to the date and the kind of agency you select. It does not know your facts. It does not know whether a tolling rule applies to you, whether the agency is a city, a county, a state or a federal one, whether a claim against the officer's employer is even available, or whether some earlier date controls. The true deadline in a real case can be earlier than what the tool shows.

The tool says "usually," "generally" and "check with a lawyer," because that is the honest answer. It never says a claim is timely and it never says a claim is lost. Do not rely on it in place of a lawyer's calculation, and do not wait until the last day it shows.

No attorney-client relationship until a signed retainer

Reading this site does not make you our client. Neither does running the deadline tool, sending us a form, an email or a text message, and neither does a free case review. An attorney-client relationship with Usher Law Group, P.C. begins only when we and you sign a written retainer agreement that says what we are handling and what it costs.

This matters for a practical reason. Until that agreement exists, we are not tracking your dates. If a notice of claim deadline, a limitation period, a 50-h hearing or a court date is coming up, it remains yours to protect until a signed retainer says otherwise.

Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome

Anything this site says about past matters, about what courts have done in published decisions, or about what the City of New York and other governments have paid in police misconduct cases describes other people's cases. Those figures are public statistics drawn from the sources cited where they appear. They are not a prediction or a promise about yours. Every case turns on its own facts, its own evidence, and the judge and jury who decide it. We publish no figures about our own results on this site.

Fees

We take police abuse cases on a contingency fee: our legal fee is a percentage of what is recovered, confirmed in a written retainer before we begin, and if nothing is recovered there is no legal fee. Court filing fees, deposition costs, expert fees and other case expenses are separate from the legal fee, and the retainer explains who advances them and how they are repaid. Where a statute allows the court to award attorney's fees against the defendants, the retainer explains how that award is treated. Nothing on this site is a fee quote.

Admissions and where we practice

Mikhail Usher is admitted in New York, New Jersey and Florida. Alexander Susi is admitted in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Mitchell Bromberg is admitted in New Jersey and New York. Section 1983 cases are brought in the federal district courts and the state courts, and our attorneys appear in the federal and state courts where they are admitted. For a matter in another court we associate with counsel admitted there or refer the matter. The firm's firm page lists each attorney's admissions.

Translation

The language selector on this site uses a machine translation service. The English text is the only version we have reviewed. Where a translation differs from the English, the English controls, and legal terms in particular may be translated imprecisely. If you need advice in another language, we speak Russian and Spanish in-house and arrange live interpretation for other languages.

Photographs

The photographs on this site are digitally created and illustrative. They depict our attorneys, and no other person in them is an actual client, officer or witness. No image on this site depicts an actual client, an actual officer or an actual matter. The three attorney portraits on the firm page are photographs.

Links to other sites

This site links to government sources, court decisions and the firm's other practice sites. We do not control the government and court sites and are not responsible for their content. A link is not an endorsement.