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Barasch & McGarry totally screwed up my case with incompetence and malpractice!! They have this “reputation” for being champions of the 9/11 victim community, but they totally dropped the ball with me!! The big problem with them is they are huge with thousands of clients and there in lies the problem - it becomes “death by committee” if you’re not on top of them and realize that you’ll never just deal with one lawyer but many, many different employees which helps dilute your personal relationship with the firm as well as your story and facts and if there is never one point person to make sure everything sent in on your behalf is correct, it’s pretty easy to have erroneous/incomplete documentation send in for your case. And, since I’ve been dealing with various cancer diagnoses over the past 4 years with surgeries, radiation and chemotherapy (that I’m still dealing with), I TRUSTED them to have my back and fight for me while making sure anything submitted was correct and didn’t actually hurt my case!! After dealing with many different lawyers, paralegals, assistants, etc. at Barasch & McGarry where one hand apparently didn’t know what the other was doing, they submitted incorrect, incomplete documents and even omitted correct documents that were necessary to prove my case on appeal such as they submitted a witness statement which stated that the witness didn't see me in the exposure zone, when in fact she did. They also failed to upload the statement from my only other witness!! The Victim’s Compensation Fund threw my whole case out because of mistakes like this, and with no opportunity for another appeal!! And when I asked the attorney who handled the appeals hearing what happened that they threw my case out, he just said cluelessly that this happens and we’re out of options - and then the ONLY way I found out about the truly lousy job they did was by immediately getting another lawyer who was able to get access to everything they sent to the VCF and was amazed at the incompetence he saw!! Even with this new lawyer, my case may still be dead and I’m screwed out of some money that would've truly helped me while I’m still fighting cancer and unable to work!! And what really kills me is that Michael Barasch, the head of the firm, goes on TV occasionally as an impassioned advocate for 9/11 victims, telling the world how much they fight for the 9/11 community, but I guess that didn’t include me. I really would love for him to contact me and explain to me how such a vaunted 9/11 related law firm could have screwed up my case so badly and let me down - I will be awaiting his call!! In the meantime, this is really a wake-up call for anyone else fighting 9/11 related illnesses that maybe sometimes a huge firm like Barasch & McGarry may not always have your back while your case gets lost in an abyss of assorted lawyers, clerks, secretaries, assistants, etc. - one more clueless about your case than the next!
