Frank Dito moved his practice from personal injury to workers’ compensation on purpose, and for two reasons.
The first is that he has always been interested in medicine. A compensation claim is, underneath the forms and the hearings, an argument about a body — what the diagnosis actually says, what the treating provider did or did not put in the report, what the examiner concluded from eleven minutes in a room. That is the part of the work he likes. It is also the part most claims are won and lost on.
The second is timing. A personal injury case unfolds slowly. The milestones are far apart, the outcome is often years away, and there are long stretches where there is genuinely very little to tell a client. A compensation claim is the opposite. The person is at their most injured and their most confused right at the beginning, because the injury has just happened — nobody has explained what a C-3 is, the checks have not started, and the employer has gone quiet.
That is the moment when a lawyer is actually worth something. Not in three years. In the first ninety days, when somebody needs to be told what is about to happen, in what order, and what they have to do this week. Frank would rather be useful then.
The other thing he noticed
For years, injured workers arriving from other firms said a version of the same thing about the representation they had before. A different attorney turned up at every hearing. Whoever turned up did not have the notes from the last one and did not always know what needed to be asked. And afterwards there was nobody to call who could say what had happened, because the person who had been in the room was already somewhere else, with somebody else’s file.
None of that is necessarily incompetence. It is what happens when a claim is handled by a volume operation rather than by a lawyer. But the person living inside the claim experiences it much more simply: nobody here knows who I am.
This firm is built the other way round.
One attorney, from the first form to the last hearing
Covering counsel appears at hearings here, as it does at every compensation firm in New York — the Board’s calendar does not arrange itself around one lawyer’s diary. What is different is everything around that appearance.
One attorney owns the claim from beginning to end. After each hearing the covering attorney reports back directly to that attorney, not into a file. The direction of the claim is then set from those reports, by someone who knows what was argued at the last four appearances and what the carrier has been working toward across all of them.
And the client speaks to the attorney who owns the file — not to whoever happened to cover the hearing. What happened, what it means, and what has to happen before the next date, from the person actually steering it.
That is a small structural difference and it changes almost everything about how a claim feels from the inside. It is also how claims get won. Compensation runs on medical evidence and prior testimony, and neither of those is legible to somebody reading the file for the first time in the hallway.
The practice
Workers’ compensation is the core of it — injured workers across New York City and New York State, in construction, warehouse and distribution, health care, and every other workplace where people get hurt and then have to prove it.
Alongside that the firm handles personal injury: car and truck accidents, construction accidents, medical malpractice, hospital negligence, nursing home neglect and abuse, wrongful death, and claims under the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund.
A meaningful share of the compensation work arrives from other lawyers. Personal injury firms with a serious third-party case send the compensation claim here, because the two run on different rules and because the compensation lien and the carrier’s credit decide how much of a third-party recovery the client actually keeps. It is the reason for a tagline the firm did not pick for itself: Your Lawyer’s Workers’ Compensation Lawyer.
Three books, all free
Frank has written three books for people who never expected to need them. All three download from this site with no form to fill in.
- The New York Workers’ Compensation Book — fifty-eight pages on what actually happens after you are hurt at work in New York, and where a claim quietly comes apart.
- The New York Accident Book — the ten mistakes that damage an accident case, no-fault and the serious injury threshold, and what a lawsuit actually involves.
- A Lawyer’s Guide to Purchasing Car Insurance — how to read a policy, and which coverage protects you rather than the other driver.
They exist because the same questions come up in the first phone call every time, and an hour of reading beforehand tends to be worth more than an hour of explaining afterwards. All three download here.
Background
Frank J. Dito, Jr. was admitted to the New York State Bar in 1998 and has practiced ever since, appearing throughout New York State and most often in Staten Island, Brooklyn and Queens.
He is a member of the New York State Trial Lawyers Institute, the Multi-Million Dollar Advocates Forum, and the Richmond County and Brooklyn Bar Associations.
He grew up in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, and moved to Staten Island when he married. The office has been here since.
Talk to the attorney who will handle your claim
If your injury happened recently, the first ninety days matter more than almost anything that comes after, and that conversation costs nothing. If you already have a claim running and something about it does not feel right, you are welcome to call for a second opinion whether or not you change anything afterwards.
Call 718.701.2776 or 800.310.5520.
1610 Richmond Road #200, Staten Island, NY 10304
Consultations are free. If we don’t recover money for you, we don’t get paid.
Education
- St. John’s University – B.S. in Political Science
- New York Law School – Juris Doctorate – 1997
Publications
- The New York Workers’ Compensation Book
- The New York Accident Book
- A Lawyer’s Guide to Purchasing Car Insurance
Bar Admissions
- New York State – 1998
Court Admissions
- Eastern District of New York
- Southern District of New York