Richard P. Amico

The Bus That Stopped Across Seven Lanes

Cynthia N. Wiggins was seventeen, a mother, and an employee at the Walden Galleria mall outside Buffalo. Her bus carried her from the city to work — and stopped across a seven-lane roadway from the mall, beside no sidewalk, no marked crosswalk, no shelter. Crossing toward her job, she was struck by a dump truck. She later died.

Richard Amico served as trial counsel with Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. The case developed the evidence beneath the geography: the transit-access policy that kept the city bus off mall property, the walking route it forced, the roadway conditions, the driver's conduct, and what the mall and the transit authority knew about the arrangement they had created.

Public attention preceded a February 1996 policy change allowing the bus to stop on mall property — a correction that arrived before the civil claims concluded. The Federal Highway Administration later cited the matter in guidance on dangerous pedestrian conditions near passenger discharge points. After trial began in November 1999, the claims concluded in a $2.55 million settlement for Wiggins's son.

The case distilled what Amico's practice does: find the rule or policy that governed the event, prove what the responsible parties knew, and carry the record through to the result.

Ruisech and the Court of Appeals

Felipe Ruisech suffered a spinal injury while installing a glass panel weighing roughly five hundred pounds at a Manhattan construction site. His foot slipped on concrete pebbles beside a metal channel in the floor.

Amico represented Ruisech in the New York Court of Appeals. The claims depended on Labor Law § 241(6), which lets a construction worker rely on specific safety commands in New York's Industrial Code — so the record had to connect the loose material and the active working area to regulations governing slippery conditions, floors, and platforms.

The appeal also turned on something as unglamorous as electronic service. In November 2024, the Court of Appeals treated service through the NYSCEF docket as party-specific and held the relevant filing timely against 200 Park, Tishman Speyer, and CBRE — keeping the statutory questions alive.

On the merits, the court held that 200 Park and CBRE had not conclusively shown that the pebbles were inherent to the work or unavoidable, were not a foreign substance, or did not create a slippery condition. It also rejected the intermediate court's view that the working-area rule covered only passageways; the regulation extends to floors and platforms where people work or pass. The completed appeal restored two Labor Law § 241(6) theories against the property owner and manager for later adjudication.

Steck and the Twenty-Day Clock

After a 1992 automobile collision, William Steck recovered the other driver's $300,000 liability limit and demanded arbitration of an underinsurance claim under his State Farm policy. New York law gave the insurer twenty days after service of the arbitration demand to seek a stay. State Farm waited more than four months, then objected based on the relationship between the two policies' liability limits.

Amico took the case to the New York Court of Appeals. In April 1996, the court held that because the policy contained an arbitration agreement, objections concerning unmet coverage conditions had to be raised within the statutory period. The coverage question belonged to the contractually designated arbitrator.

The relief was procedural but complete: the insurer's late stay request could not displace the agreed arbitral forum, and Steck's right to have the dispute decided there was enforced.

The Corter Judgment

James L. Corter died at the Seneca Meadows Landfill, where the unloading system depended on communication between a trailer-tipper operator and a driver backing a tractor-trailer onto a raised platform. The factual record centered on a broken CB radio, the absence of a backup alarm, the driver's limited view, and the location of the platform controls. A state fatality investigation recommended testing radios before unloading, using alarms or spotters, requiring visual confirmation, and keeping workers outside the backing zone.

Amico and Anna Robbins carried that safety record into the family's damages presentation. On May 16, 2023, the court entered a total judgment of $5,751,617.17 — $3 million for Corter's injuries and loss of parental guidance, $477,053 in pecuniary loss, and $2,274,564.17 in prejudgment interest, stated separately in the entered judgment.

Nary and the Preserved Verdict

In Nary v. Jonientz, a motor-vehicle plaintiff won a jury verdict including past and future pain and suffering and future medical expenses. Amico defended the result in the Fourth Department against challenges to cross-examination of the defense medical expert and redactions to recorded testimony.

In October 2013, the Fourth Department unanimously affirmed. The relevant objections had not been timely and specifically preserved, the record established no abuse of discretion, the pain-and-suffering awards did not materially deviate from reasonable compensation, and the future medical expenses were established with sufficient certainty. The jury returned the verdict; Amico made sure the judgment survived it.

From Safety Failure to Civil Proof

Amico begins with the rule or procedure that governed the event and the records showing whether it was followed. Depending on the matter, that may be an Industrial Code provision, a radio protocol, a transit-access policy, an expert foundation, or an electronic-service deadline.

In Corter, the communication system, vehicle equipment, backing route, control location, and safety investigation explained the failure. In Wiggins, the proof joined the bus policy to the route across Walden Avenue. In Ruisech, the site condition had to be matched to the text and scope of specific construction-safety regulations. The same discipline continues at trial and on appeal, where expert foundations, objections, verdict sheets, post-trial motions, notices of entry, and filing dates determine what evidence and relief remain available.

Trial and Appellate Practice

Amico began practicing in 1989 after studying political science at the State University of New York at Buffalo and earning his law degree from the University at Buffalo School of Law. He serves as Chief Trial Counsel for The Barnes Firm and Co-Chair of its Labor Law Department.

In a 2024 federal trucking matter, Amico and Alex Bouganim resolved the claims through an $862,500 settlement after the defense retained accident-reconstruction, medical, and vocational experts to contest fault, injury, and wage loss; the plaintiffs' team coordinated the collision record, medical evidence, and proof of future work capacity using those disciplines.

Amico writes and argues his own appeals and has appeared in each of New York's four Appellate Division departments and in the Court of Appeals. His practice brings the initial factual investigation, trial proof, and appellate record into one continuous assignment.