Susan Karten
Proven VerdictsSimilar personal injury attorneys in New York
About Susan Karten
Susan M. Karten is the founder and senior partner of Susan M. Karten & Associates, LLP in Manhattan. She began her legal career at the New York Court of Appeals working for Associate Judge Jacob D. Fuchsberg, later joined him in private practice, and established her own firm in 1986. Karten tried the East 91st Street crane collapse case for the family of Ramadan Kurtaj, one of two workers killed when a tower crane collapsed in 2008, winning a $55.5 million share of the 2015 verdicts against crane owner James Lomma. She is also known for representing Dr. Veronica Prego.
The first health care worker in the country to test HIV positive from a needle stick injury, for a $20 million settlement on behalf of families of victims of the Happy Land Social Club fire, and for a $3 million wrongful death settlement for the family of Anthony Baez against New York City, a record for a police brutality case at the time. A graduate of Brooklyn Law School, she was admitted to the New York bar in 1984 and concentrates on medical malpractice, construction accidents, brain damaged infant cases, premises liability, municipal liability, and civil rights matters.
Proven verdicts and settlements
In the summer of 2015, after an eleven month trial over the May 30, 2008 tower crane collapse on East 91st Street in Manhattan, a jury held crane owner James Lomma, New York Crane & Equipment Corp., and J.F. Lomma, Inc. liable for the deaths of construction worker Ramadan Kurtaj, 27, and crane operator Donald Leo, 30. The awards against the Lomma defendants for Kurtaj's estate came to $55.5 million: $7.5 million for preimpact terror, $24 million for conscious pain and suffering, and $24 million in punitive damages, part of roughly $96 million in combined verdicts for the two families. Susan M. Karten of Susan M. Karten & Associates was trial counsel for the Kurtaj family. The honest frame: on September 12, 2017 the Appellate Division, First Department found the awards excessive and reduced the Kurtaj figures to $2 million, $7.5 million, and $9.5 million, a total of $19 million, and the Leo figures to $16 million, cutting the combined awards to about $35 million.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.
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Proven verdicts and settlements from other New York firms
