Lake Success-based lawyer wins $15 million verdict

Richard Tedesco

East Williston attorney Robert Fallorino’s said the idea to practice law came to him at the age of seven or eight as he observed the events of the civil rights movement and realized there were things wrong in society that needed to be corrected.

He said he consciously recalls the thought, “I would like to be a lawyer and help people.”

As a medical malpractice lawyer with the Lake Success firm of Pegalis and Erickson since 1996, that’s exactly what he’s sought to do.

“You can provide for a family that’s been wronged. It has a lot of responsibility, but it has great rewards,” he said. “If it’s someone who needs supplies or future surgeries, you can ensure they can live as normal a life as they can.”

Fallorino, 52, was recently recognized by Verdict Search, a publisher of verdict and settlement news and research, for winning the fourth highest medical malpractice settlement of 2012 – a $15 million judgment for a woman who received a diagnosis that failed to identify cancerous tumors in her breasts. 

The court found that in 2002 Dr. Paul Fisher, of Stonybrook University Medical Center, didn’t order a sonogram that could have enabled the early detection of cancer in his client – St. James Stephanie Tesoriero.

In doing so, Fisher was found liable for “departing from accepted standards of care” in treating the patient in the case, Fallorino said. 

Tesoriero, who was in her 40s at the time, had gone to Fisher after discovering growths in her breasts during a self-examination, Fallorino said. 

The doctor, Fallorino said, only took X-rays, which are a less effective way to detect breast cancer in a woman Tesoriero’s age at the time of the exam.

By the time Fallorino, who serves as a trustee on the East Williston Board of Education, filed the lawsuit in Nassau County Supreme Court in 2006, Tesoriero was receiving chemotherapy and the trial date had to be put on hold. 

Despite being treated with chemotherapy, surgery and radiation treatments, the cancer metasticized and Tesoriero will remain under treatment for cancer for the rest of her life, Fallorino said.

This painful path, he said, added to his satisfaction with the verdict.

“It was vindication for the lady, that she had been wronged and it was some light at the end of the tunnel,” he said. “She did it for exactly the right reasons, for patient safety.”

Fallorino said Tesoriero’s goal is to simply live long enough to see her 10-year-old son to graduate high school.

Asked if it was a difficult case to deal with emotionally, Fallorino said that’s true with virtually every case he tries.

“You get emotionally tied to these people because you know you’re their last stand. We can’t ease the medical pain and suffering. We can ease the financial constraints it places on them,” he said. “While we’re trying this, it’s a gut-wrenching couple of weeks.”

He said his family can always tell when he’s in the midst of working on a case, realizing he needs time and space to himself.

Upon graduating with a law degree from St. John’s University in 1986, Fallorino said he was drawn to practice in the context of medical lawsuits.

“I was always interested in medicine because it’s a dynamic field,” he said. “My first job was in medical malpractice defense. I always wanted to go into litigation of some sort.”

After 10 years in that area of the law, he made what has been a more satisfying side of medical malpractice, with experience that makes him more effective. 

“When I review a case, I have an understanding of the defense side and the patient’s side,” Fallorino said.

He has averaged three verdicts a year throughout his career, taking time to prepare cases that typically take as much as a month to actually try in court. The number of verdicts he records belies the number of cases he handles since so many medical malpractice suits end in settlements.

When he’s not able to offer a legal answer, he said he’s able to provide some resolution by informing prospective clients they don’t have a viable case to pursue.

In his free time, he has always value spending time with his family, always having dinner together, going to the beach, taking family vacations and taking his sons to New York Mets baseball games.

“We just hang out as a family,” Fallorino said.

He said he recalled he was starting a trial when the Montreal Expos were playing their last game against Mets at Shea Stadium. He made a point of bringing his three sons to the game and his youngest son, Luke, saw some children entering the ballpark in wheelchairs. He asked his father what was wrong with them and Fallorino said he told him they had developmental problems and they needed the wheelchairs because they couldn’t walk.

He then heard his middle son, Xavier, 7, now a pitcher for the Wheatley School baseball team, tell his younger brother, “Those are the people daddy helps.” 

Without saying a word, Fallorino said, Luke moved alongside his father and firmly took hold of his hand.

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