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John Zaremba Featured in LaborPress

June 8, 2016
John D Zaremba
HomeBlogJohn Zaremba Featured in LaborPress

The following profile of Pitta Giblin & Baione LLP Of Counsel Attorney John Zaremba, Esq. was featured in LaborPress.

by Silver Krieger

“Attorney John Zaremba, of Zaremba Brown, PLLC, is a personal injury attorney and a New York native who wins big for construction workers injured on the job.  We sat down with him to learn more about him, and about the future of his law firm.

Born in Brooklyn, Mr. Zaremba attended law school at Fordham, and started Zaremba Brown ten years ago. He and his colleagues at the firm came together from another international law firm, where they worked at defending high exposure construction accident cases. “We started out at working from Starbucks with a laptop and built the firm to where it is today, with 25 employees, having recovered more than $100,000,000 for injured workers over the past few years,” he says.

On June 1st Zaremba and partner Brian Brown are launching a new firm together with Vincent Pitta, Vincent Giblin and Vito Pitta of Pitta & Giblin LLP– to be known as, Pitta Giblin Zaremba and Brown. The new firm will combine the personal injury lawyers of Zaremba Brown with top union-side firm Pitta & Giblin. The partners of Pitta & Giblin have been in service to New York’s labor union community for more than 40 years. According to Zaremba, the new firm will offer Zaremba Brown’s services – handling construction accident and other personal injury law suits – to the members of the unions that Pitta & Giblin serves. By combining these two firms, Pitta Giblin Zaremba Brown will be able to offer a superior level of both resources and experience to injured union members and their families.

Currently, Zaremba’s firm focuses its practice almost entirely on construction industry accidents brought by members of building trades unions. As for reasons why he sees so many “on the job” accidents, Zaremba says that the construction industry developers, contractors and subcontractors “very often choose profit and speed over safety,” and that most accidents happen because the companies involved cut corners. Most of these accidents are avoidable, he adds and cites Labor Law 240, and Labor Law 241 subsection 6, along with OSHA, regulations that set out a whole range of requirements that specify what contractors and owners must do to maintain safety on the job site.  “Almost every one of my cases comes from a violation of those laws or regulations,” he says.  “If you choose profit and speed over safety, the workers invariably suffer.”

If someone is injured on the job, what is the first thing they should do?  Says Zaremba: “Get medical attention, take photos, and then call a personal injury attorney. The second an accident happens on the job an adversarial process starts.  The insurance companies, contractors, foremen, safety officials all start their investigations.  If you fell off a ladder, the ladder’s gone, if the scaffold collapses, the scaffold’s gone.  If
you fell in a hole in the ground, the hole is covered over.  It happens immediately.  Adverse witness statements are taken, and the fight has already started.  The sooner you get a personal injury lawyer involved, the sooner you can even the playing field.”

Zaremba has some special compliments for building trades union members. When you go before a jury with a man or a woman who’s a building trades union member – the members of the jury are sympathetic to them because they know that union building trades members work as hard or harder than anyone else under the most dangerous of conditions; and while they continue to want to work hard, they can’t, because someone did something to them that caused their injuries. Juries believe in that.  Juries want to help people like them, because they know the injured construction worker is not looking for any easy way out or a handout. They’re bringing a lawsuit to get justly compensated for their physical injuries and for their inability in many cases to continue to do the work they love to do, and what they’ve always done.”

Zaremba also says it’s a challenge for the lawyers, because “when an injured construction worker comes to you, they’ve been working with their hands their whole life, supporting their family. They’re proud of the work they do building things and providing for their families, and unfortunately can’t do their job anymore. That’s a tremendous responsibility put on you as their lawyer.  You have to deliver for them. You have to take care of that member and his family. You have to bring him or her back [financially] to where he or she was before he or she got hurt, or better. So it’s a big challenge for me as their lawyer to come back with them from Court and getting for them what they’re entitled to and more. I’m proud to say that we have not lost a construction union case yet.  I hope that continues. And if hard work and dedication rules, it will continue.”

For more information, contact Pitta Giblin & Baione LLP at info@pgbllp.com or 844-WTC COMP.