Who We Are
H.Q. Nguyen
Founding Partner
Andrew Leftt has a well-earned reputation as a tough New York City trial lawyer with an entertaining but formidable no-holds-barred courtroom presence, relentless focus on investigation and preparation, and aggressive and effective negotiations.
Mr. Leftt tries complex medical and negligence matters for the catastrophically injured and their families. He is the person they call when there is nowhere else to turn and the stakes are as high as they get. Besides representing the firm’s clients, he is sought after by attorneys in New York City and from around the country for their trials as well. The firm represents a wide variety of clients, including lawyers, judges, business executives, doctors, union workers, celebrities, and homemakers. Mr. Leftt has been retained by past adversaries and insurance adjusters to represent their injured family members, and by former jurors that sat through his trials. He has proudly recovered many millions of dollars for First Responders including those in the Emergency Medical Service and their families.
Mr. Leftt was named a Superlawyers “Rising Star” for 2011 and 2012 and a “Top 40 Under 40” litigator by The National Trial Lawyers. More recently he has been selected as a Superlawyer for 2013–2024, and a “Top 100 Trial Lawyer” by the National Trial Lawyers for 2014 – 2021. His verdicts have appeared in Top Verdicts in New York for medical malpractice and for negligence cases, and in the Verdicts and Settlements Hall of Fame. He is a member of the New York State Trial Lawyers Association and the Nathan R. Sobel Inns of Court, as well as the Historical Society of the Courts of the State of New York. Mr. Leftt appears regularly in the Supreme Court in all five counties in the City and in the surrounding counties, in the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York, as well as before the Appellate Courts of the First and Second Departments.
In some recent cases:
- a woman crossing mid-block was struck by a car reversing into a parking space, causing a mild Traumatic Brain Injury (mTBI);
- a young man’s front bicycle wheel fell into a gap in the subway grates causing severe facial, and other, trauma;
- a woman crossing the street was struck by a car and suffered a subdural hematoma and severe Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI);
- an ambulance rolled over and its driver suffered an injury requiring Open Reduction, Internal Fixation (“ORIF”);
- a world-famous scientist crossing the street was struck and sustained a severe Traumatic Brain Injury (“TBI”) from which he died a year later;
- a newborn baby was injured by medical mistakes made during delivery, causing Erb’s Palsy.
These cases and others involve multi-million dollar corporate defendants with huge insurance policies issued by the largest insurance companies in the world. The insurance companies hire the biggest insurance defense law firms with the best defense lawyers around and never willingly accept responsibility for the damages they’ve caused until faced with a jury at trial.
Cases handled by Mr. Leftt have appeared on the front pages the New York Times and New York Law Journal, inside the Wall Street Journal, New York Post and Daily News, and as lead stories on Yahoo and AOL news.
Bar Admissions
- State of New York
- State of New Jersey
- State of Texas, pro hac vice
- United States District Court for the Southern District of New York
- United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York
- Supreme Court of the United States
Andrew Leftt
Founding Partner
H.Q. Nguyen began his career as a trial lawyer serving the public. As an Assistant District Attorney in the Bronx during the 1990’s, he was assigned to the narcotic bureau prosecuting cases involving the illegal sale of highly addictive narcotics.
At the time he joined the District Attorney’s Office in the Bronx, street sales of crack, cocaine and heroin were rampant throughout New York City. In the final years of his time at the District Attorney’s Office, Mr. Nguyen’s principal duty was to prosecute street sales of crack, cocaine and heroin in order to make the streets safer for the hardworking families of the Bronx.
After leaving the government sector, Mr. Nguyen became the senior trial attorney for a personal injury firm. There he first encountered numerous plaintiffs plagued by Traumatic Brain Injuries (‘TBI’) stemming from their accidents, but not recognized as such by their physicians or attorneys. Mr. Nguyen repeatedly saw that regular treating doctors did not readily recognize certain brain injuries, and that the lawyers retained to represent people suffering from these brain injuries never thoroughly investigated these medical issues if not clearly documented in the earliest phases of the case.
Mr. Nguyen discovered that brain injuries often occur in situations without direct blunt force, such as in whiplash accidents. Often, these situations resulted in no diagnosis of brain injury at all. As a result, the severe nature of these cases was often unappreciated and the cases often viewed as ‘small.’ Consequently, many lawyers routinely settled these cases for inadequate amounts. Mr. Nguyen recognized an important pattern in that only the victim’s family members that could tell how their loved one was changed by an accident.
Sadly, these family members were never given the chance to tell the story of a loved one before, and since, the accident. Mr. Nguyen tirelessly gathered medical evidence, often through hours of family and co-worker interviews, of symptoms such as memory deficits, increased irritability, chronic headaches, sleep problems, concentration difficulties, depression, and chronic dizziness that had not been recognized or attributed to potential Traumatic Brain Injury (‘TBI’). Taken collectively, the lack of understanding of Traumatic Brain Injury (‘TBI’) by both the legal and medical community, and the inability of the Traumatic Brain Injury (‘TBI’) victim to effectively advocate his or her loss, had inescapably led to inadequate financial recoveries, as well as continuously undiscovered injuries. In short, there was a lack of understanding of the neuropathology of Traumatic Brain Injuries (‘TBIs’) not only in the legal arena but also more significantly within the medical field.
Mr. Nguyen is dedicated to fighting this silent epidemic. Now, he is one of the go-to lawyers in this emerging field. His co-counsel is routinely demanded by lawyers faced with taking these complex cases to trial. The largest settlements and verdicts involving Traumatic Brain Injury cases often have his name on them. Throughout the years, H.Q. Nguyen has represented hundreds of clients that suffered shearing brain injuries with substantial cognitive deficits as a result of trauma that were only correctly diagnosed after his advocacy caused them to undergo further brain scans such as MRIs with DTI sequencing that revealed white matter damage. H.Q. Nguyen has found purpose in advocating for those that suffer accidents and sustain Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) injuries.
- State of New York
- State of Texas, pro hac vice
- United States District Court for the Southern District of New York
- United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York
- Supreme Court of the United States
Stephen Chakwin
Trial Lawyer
Stephen Chakwin helps people by preparing and trying cases and arguing appeals. He tried and won his first case in 1979, saving an innocent man from jail. In 1984, one of his first appeals got the Court of Appeals – New York’s highest court – to change the law of habeas corpus for a man who was being wrongfully held in custody. Since then he’s helped injured clients recover millions of dollars.
He understands that representing injured people is a serious responsibility. He has seen how the outcome of a case can determine the future of a person or a family.
He knows how hard the insurance companies and corporations fight to avoid paying what justice requires. Years of running a nationwide corporate legal defense program and defending doctors and hospitals against medical malpractice cases taught him defense tricks and tactics. Since 2000, he has devoted his knowledge and experience exclusively to helping injured people get the money they need to rebuild their lives.
The people who he represents are important to him and he brings his heart, his mind, and his life’s experience to helping them.
He is admitted to practice in the state and federal courts of New York, Connecticut, and California (inactive), as well as the Second and Ninth Circuits, and the United States Supreme Court. He has lectured and written on many topics for his fellow trial lawyers and other audiences. He graduated from Dartmouth College and New York Law School.