ENEWSLETTER: October 2016

Civil Rights and Personal Injury and General Practice Law Firm, Dedicated to Social Justice

The Law Offices of Frederick K. Brewington is a well-respected litigation firm with an office in Hempstead, Long Island. Our focus is primarily in the area of civil rights, voting rights, employment discrimination, police misconduct, personal injury, medical malpractice, wrongful death and criminal law. However, the Law Offices of Frederick K. Brewington is a full- service law firm handling matters in numerous areas of law and providing a wide range of services from contract formation to litigation and trial practice.

RECENT VERDICTS AND SETTLEMENTS
$7.75 million- Civil Rights and wrongful death action brought by the family of deceased

$4.7 million- Repeated verbal and physical assaults on Yemeni-American employee, while supervisor failed to protect employee and discipline the assailant

$1.277 million- Race based attack and serious injury by violent acts against Plaintiffs, who were lured to an isolated warehouse

$2.8 million- Wrongful death, products liability case involving a tow motor accident at a sewage treatment plant

Attorney Speaks on Voting Rights and Domestic Violence

In a special edition of Super Lawyers Magazine, Frederick K. Brewington was interviewed for an article on voting rights and the 2016 presidential election. He was also interviewed by Long Island Pulse regarding the Jo'Anna Bird case and domestic violence.

Mr. Brewington told Super Lawyers that New York State's "closed" primary system requiring voters to register and/or switch parties by a certain deadline hurts minorities in their attempt to vote. "Those in power often look for excuses to invalidate the votes of previously defined minorities," he said. "We have to get past the point in New York City where we find it so easy to take away someone’s right to vote."

One of the ways to get out the vote, Mr. Brewington said, is to have schools bring back citizenship classes. The idea came to him when he was at the Board of Elections and saw a high school teacher handing in a stack of voter registration forms. He told Mr. Brewington that, when a student turns 18, they fill out a voter registration form and he brings the forms to the BOE. "If every district did that, we'd increase turnout by 25%," Mr. Brewington said.

In Long Island Pulse, Mr. Brewington discussed the case of Jo'Anna Bird – whose family he represented – the police's inability to protect her and how domestic abuse can be prevented. In 2009, Ms. Bird was stabbed to death by her former boyfriend, Leonardo Valdez-Cruz. Mr. Brewington filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of Ms. Bird's family against the Nassau County Police Department, claiming the police failed to protect her on numerous occasions.

When asked how and why these incidents happen, Mr. Brewington replied, "It happens because police are not concerned about following particular rules. A woman is dead and her family and children won't know their mother. That's how it happens. It happens through negligence and utter disregard that amounts to a death sentence for a woman who should be alive to tell the story."

He says that teaching prevention of domestic violence should be taught as early as junior high school and start with early intervention and early enforcement. The reason that it is difficult to prosecute such cases, he said, is what he calls "the control component." Either the victim calls the police then changes their mind because the abuser is the primary breadwinner in the home and they depend on that income, or the perpetrator interferes with the police’s ability to collect information.

"That should not stop them from doing what they are required to do by statute, which is not trying to mediate those situations," Mr. Brewington said. "If a complaint is made, the complaint is to be followed and an arrest is to be made."

Mr. Brewington suggested that those who are being abused by their partner should seek help from local groups and organizations that combat domestic violence or the District Attorney's office, but it may be difficult to do so. "There are only a limited number of safe houses for people to get some type of solace," he said. "Finding those and getting access to resources many times for victims is hard."

To read the Super Lawyers article, click here.

To read the Long Island Pulse article, click here.

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