Gustavo Alzugaray

When someone is hurt in an accident, the injury is only part of what turns their life upside down. Almost overnight, there are medical bills, missed paychecks, insurance adjusters, and a legal system that can feel like it was built for everyone except them. I became a lawyer to stand on the other side of that, to be a voice for people who were injured and whose lives were changed unnecessarily because someone else was careless.

I have been with Jacoby & Meyers since 2005, and today I am a Partner and manage the firm’s Bronx County office. Before I represented injured people, I spent the early part of my career seeing these cases from the other direction: first as a criminal defense attorney with the Legal Aid Society in Kings County, and then as a trial attorney defending insurance-company clients in personal injury matters.

That experience taught me exactly how the other side thinks: how insurers value a claim, where they push, and what it actually takes to move them. I have spent every year since putting that knowledge to work for the people who need it most.

My Role at Jacoby & Meyers

As the managing attorney of our Bronx office, I handle personal injury cases from the first client meeting all the way through resolution, whether that comes at trial, in mediation, or through arbitration. I am a trial lawyer at heart, and I am comfortable taking a case all the way to a jury when the other side refuses to treat my client fairly. That willingness matters: insurers know which attorneys will settle for less to avoid a courtroom and which ones will not, and it changes how they deal with you.

I am also deeply rooted in the Bronx legal community. I have served as a Director of the Bronx Bar Association since 2019, and I have continued to sharpen my trial skills through advocacy programs including the National Institute of Trial Advocacy in Chicago, the Trial Lawyers College, and trial advocacy courses in Philadelphia and South Carolina. This is the kind of work you never really finish learning, and I take that seriously.

The Cases I Handle

My practice covers the range of serious injury matters that most affect working families in and around the Bronx, including:

• Commercial and motor vehicle collisions, where liability and the true extent of an injury are so often disputed;
• Trip-and-fall and premises liability claims, which frequently turn on close questions of notice and property maintenance;
• Construction accidents, involving New York’s strong labor-law protections for workers hurt on the job; and
• Premises and other negligence cases, including matters involving vulnerable clients who were harmed by someone else’s failure to keep them safe.

Whatever the case type, my focus is the same: build it carefully, prepare it as though it is going to trial, and never let an insurance company decide what my client’s claim is worth.

How I Work with My Clients

I believe it is critical to develop a real relationship with the people I represent. From the very beginning, it is important to me that a client feels they have an advocate standing with them through every step of the process, not just a name on a file. A great deal of that comes down to communication. I keep my clients informed with frequent updates on where their case stands and what is coming next, because a client who is kept in the loop is a client who feels heard and understood.

That approach is also why I place so much value on being able to speak with my clients directly in their own language. Helping Spanish-speaking clients is particularly rewarding for me because, for many of them, being able to talk through their case with their attorney in Spanish is the difference between feeling like a spectator and feeling like a participant in their own claim. Si usted está lesionado en un accidente y necesita ayuda legal, llámeme.

The most meaningful moments in this job come from that relationship. When a client tells me they consider me family, or that their settlement is going to change their life, that means more to me than any single result. It reflects a level of trust and satisfaction that can only be built on communication, understanding, and commitment, and earning it is the part of this work I am proudest of.

Experience and Representative Work

Some of the cases I find most rewarding are those brought against the City of New York. They demand patience, because the process is often long and tedious, but we have achieved significant results for our clients by staying the course.

Over the years, I have been fortunate to secure meaningful outcomes for injured people and their families.

• Working alongside Managing Partner Andrew Finkelstein, I helped resolve a construction case for $3,500,000 on behalf of a worker who fell fifteen feet from a scaffold at a Bronx job site and needed surgery to his ankle and back.
• In another matter, I argued a motor vehicle case before a Bronx jury and secured a $250,000 verdict for a wife and mother injured as a passenger after two insurance companies had offered a combined $45,000 to make the case go away, an offer we rejected.
• As part of our nursing home team, I helped obtain a $1,000,000 settlement for a client who was neglected in a Bronx nursing facility.

(Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome; every case turns on its own facts.)

Why I Do This Work

I wanted to be a voice for those who were injured and whose lives were changed unnecessarily because of someone else’s negligence. Having spent time on the defense side, I know how easily an injured person can be outmatched by an insurer with more resources and every incentive to pay as little as possible. Leveling that fight and reminding my clients that they are not facing it alone is what keeps me at it.

That commitment extends beyond my own cases. On behalf of the firm, I have been proud to help sponsor Moot Court competitions, Student Law Days, and student bookbag giveaways, because investing in the next generation and in the community I serve is part of the same job.