City Of New York Sues Manhattan Law Firm Asher & Associates For Orchestrating Personal Injury Fraud Scheme
October 5, 2026
Today, New York City Corporation Counsel Steven Banks and New York City Department of Transportation Commissioner Mike Flynn announced that the City of New York has filed suit against Manhattan law firm Asher & Associates, P.C. and its principals for running a personal injury fraud scheme.
“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,” said New York City Corporation Counsel Steven Banks. “As detailed in our complaint, this firm undermined our civil justice system by operating an illegal scheme to defraud taxpayers and fabricating personal injury claims against the City and others.”
“Fraudulent personal injury lawsuits profit on the misfortune of others and taxpayers bear the burden,” said New York City Department of Transportation Commissioner Mike Flynn. “The Mamdani administration will hold these bad actors accountable to the full extent of the law.”
The lawsuit, filed in the Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York, accuses Asher & Associates of fraudulently filing more than a dozen notices of claim and related lawsuits seeking tens of millions of dollars from the City and its Department of Transportation for injuries that the law firm falsely claimed its clients sustained in scooter, moped and bicycle accidents caused by roadway defects.
According to the City’s complaint, the firm has claimed in legal filings that the City is negligent because roadway defects were the cause of injuries to their clients. These claims were made despite contradictory evidence given to responding ambulance and emergency room personnel documenting entirely different causes of injury, in which the City had no role. The complaint provides 15 examples of cases where the descriptions of injuries were consistent with assaults, hit-and-run driving accidents or rear-end collisions with stopped vehicles, not roadway defects.
For example:
- In Jermaine Corley v. The City of New York and the New York City Department of Transportation, a suit filed by Asher & Associates in 2022, the firm sought $3 million in damages alleging serious injury from a biking accident blamed on a defective roadway on Utica Avenue in Brooklyn where medical records indicated injuries from a fight.
- In 2022, Asher & Associates filed Boyd-Coggins v. City of New York seeking $3 million in damages based on the firm’s representations that a “ditch” or “hole” in the roadway caused a fall from an electric scooter on Fifth Avenue near West 139th Steet in Manhattan despite contrary statements to hospital personnel describing an automobile accident.
When the City or other defendants confronted Asher & Associates with these contradictory statements, the firm discontinued the cases without explanation.
The allegations in the City’s complaint describe the firm as routinely commencing parallel suits based on the same false narratives against utility companies and paving contractors whose past roadway work at the incident site was cited as a cause of the supposed roadway defect, resulting in prolonged, expensive, court-clogging litigation.
The City’s suit seeks treble damages under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act and treble damages and penalties under the City and State False Claims Acts.
The City False Claims Act imposes separate penalties of between $5,000 and $15,000 for each presentation to the City of a false claim or document supporting a false claim and treble damages. The State False Claims Act imposes even larger penalties.
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