Schwab & Gasparini PLLC

Focus and practice areas

This is a New York litigation firm that opened in 2007. Its founders had trained at larger litigation firms in the state before they built their own. The firm carries the names of Andrew J. Schwab and Louis U. Gasparini, and it takes civil cases in New York and Connecticut.

The list of practice areas runs wide for a firm this size. The firm names construction and labor law, general insurance defense, labor and employment, municipal civil rights litigation, products liability, sports injury litigation, medical malpractice defense, and trucking and transportation. The site navigation also lists car accidents. In my opinion the common thread across these is civil litigation, much of it on the defense side, where a company, an insurer, an employer or a public body has to answer a claim in court.

Litigation of this kind follows a long arc. A case opens with pleadings, moves through months of discovery and depositions, and then heads toward summary judgment motions or a trial date. A firm that lists this many litigation areas signs up for that full cycle across several fields of law. The value of a named focus, for someone comparing firms, is that it shows where a group spends its days.

Insurance defense across the practice areas

Insurance defense connects several of the areas the firm names. When a policy covers a lawsuit, the insurer often hires outside counsel to defend the policyholder, and one firm may then handle a car crash, a slip and fall or a products claim under that same arrangement. That model helps explain how a single office can carry construction, trucking and medical files at once, since the client on the retainer is frequently the carrier and the job is the defense of the person or company it insures.

A 2007 start date puts the firm close to two decades of practice. Over those years it has kept both founding names in its title, and it has held to the defense-litigation focus that its practice list still shows. For anyone weighing a firm, a settled name and a steady focus are useful markers of continuity.

Medical malpractice and professional conduct

The medical malpractice defense work is the area the firm describes in the most detail. It handles claims that involve physicians, dentists, nurses, hospitals, nursing homes and other medical providers. The breadth of that list matters, because a malpractice case against a solo dentist looks quite different from one against a hospital with layers of staff and records.

The firm also appears before the New York State Office of Professional Medical Conduct. That body, known as OPMC, reviews complaints about physician conduct and can investigate a doctor's license. A conduct review runs on its own track, apart from any civil suit for damages. A physician can face both at once: a lawsuit that asks for money, and a licensing inquiry that asks whether the doctor should keep practicing. Each carries its own rules, its own timeline and its own stakes, and a lawyer who handles one has to keep an eye on the other.

Defense in these cases leans on medical records and on the testimony of other doctors about the standard of care. The central question is usually whether the treatment met the accepted standard for the field, and that turns on detail: what the chart says, what the provider knew, and what a careful practitioner would have done. As a reviewer, I note that naming this work so precisely tells a prospective client the firm is comfortable in a technical corner of litigation.

Defending government and employers

A second strand of the firm's work defends public bodies and the people who run them. The firm represents police officers, municipal board members and other government officials in claims that allege constitutional violations. Cases like these often reach federal court under Section 1983, the civil rights statute that lets a person sue a state or local official over a violation of constitutional rights.

These suits carry rules that shape the defense early. Qualified immunity can protect an individual officer or official unless the right at issue was clearly established, and courts often decide that question before trial. Claims against a town or county itself run under a separate line of cases that ask whether an official policy or custom caused the harm. Getting those threshold questions right can end a case, or narrow it, well before a jury is ever seated.

The employment work runs alongside this public-sector defense. The firm represents employers under federal, state and local workplace laws, the rules that govern discrimination, harassment, wages, leave and the daily terms of a job. New York layers its own state and city statutes on top of the federal ones, and an employer often has to answer under all of them at the same time. Advice here tends to mix litigation with the earlier work of writing policies and handling complaints before they reach a courtroom.

Construction, products and transportation

Construction and labor law is another named area, and in New York that phrase carries specific weight. The state's Labor Law places safety duties on owners and contractors, and sections of it impose strict responsibility for certain gravity-related injuries on job sites, a rule often called the scaffold law. Those provisions drive a large volume of injury litigation, and defending or bringing such a claim calls for a close reading of who controlled the site and what protection was in place.

Products liability rounds out this group with a different kind of proof. A products case asks whether a design choice, a missing warning or a manufacturing flaw caused an injury, and the answer usually rests on engineering analysis and technical testimony. The firm also lists sports injury litigation, a niche that can pull in questions of assumed risk, equipment and supervision.

Trucking and transportation matters make up the last named field. Heavy-vehicle cases bring in federal motor carrier rules, driver logbooks, maintenance records and electronic data from the truck itself. They tend to move quickly in the days after a crash, when that evidence is fresh, and then settle into the slower rhythm of discovery. The car accident work listed in the site navigation fits the same broad category of vehicle claims.

How the team is built

The firm sets out a clear staffing model on its about page. On each matter, a partner leads a team that includes an associate, a paralegal and an assistant. That structure puts a senior lawyer on every file while the support staff carry the routine work of documents and scheduling. For a client, it means the lawyer whose name goes on the pleadings has a direct hand in the case.

The attorneys page names eight lawyers: Andrew J. Schwab, Louis U. Gasparini, Carolyn A. Loftus, Timothy G. Tuttle, Michael G. Delvecchio, Jay S. Campbell, Adrienne Odierna and Caitriona A. Robbins. Each name comes with a direct email address, which makes it simple to reach a specific person. The site lists those eight names with email addresses and does not publish individual biographies.

Direct email access is a small but real detail for anyone comparing firms. It lets a caller reach a named lawyer at a listed address, and it fits the firm's stated model of a partner who stays close to each matter. A client who wants a specific point of contact from the start finds one on the attorneys page.

Where the firm works

The firm practices across two states. Its lawyers handle matters in New York and Connecticut, and the site lists offices in Syracuse, White Plains, Brewster and Albany. Those four locations spread the firm across upstate and downstate New York, which fits litigation work, since a case filed in a given county often calls for a lawyer who can appear in that local court.

For a business, a public body or an insurer facing a lawsuit in either state, the firm presents a group that names defense litigation as its main work and puts a partner at the head of each case. The eight named attorneys and the four listed offices give the picture of a litigation firm with offices across New York and a reach into Connecticut. The two names on the door, Schwab and Gasparini, have been there since the firm opened in 2007.