James M. O’Connor

New York, 2000
United States District Court, Southern and Eastern Districts of New York
United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
United States Supreme Court

J.D., St. John’s University School of Law, B.B.A., Finance, Bernard M. Baruch College of the City University of New York (CUNY)

Litigation; Defense of automobile liability claims and general liability matters; Third-party casualty claims for property damage;

New York State Trial Lawyers Association

In 2000, James earned his diploma in Trial Advocacy Skills from the National Institute for Trial Advocacy.

James has participated in thousands of depositions, hundreds of arbitrations/mediations, and has been on trial in every County from the Bronx to Suffolk.

He is also an experienced appellate attorney having prosecuted numerous appeals and having argued before the New York State Appellate Divisions as well as the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

He focuses on the defense and prosecution of personal injury, property damage matters and related insurance coverage issues.  In having years of experience as both counsel for plaintiffs and counsel for defendants, James has a unique perspective on case strategy, preparation and valuation.

For a decade, he was a yearly guest lecturer at Columbia University for students interested in studying the law and provided monthly lectures regarding negligence law to local business leaders in Nassau County.

In 2020, James obtained a defense verdict with the jury finding no liability on his client in the case of Suarez v. Wei, Index Number 704836/2017. In this automobile sideswipe case, the jury accepted his argument that based upon the configuration of the traffic circle and the position of nearby construction barriers, the incident could not have occurred as claimed by the plaintiff.

In 2023, he was able to favorably resolve a matter of a bicyclist injured due to a defective sidewalk condition in Suffolk County.  Initially, the adjacent landowner disputed that it was responsible to maintain the sidewalk.  James convinced the landowner’s attorney that the applicable Babylon Town Code put the burden upon his client to maintain and repair the sidewalk, leaving no room to argue otherwise.  As a result, the matter was able to be resolved within months, rather than years, and without significant expense.