Read more at The New York Times

photo: Todd Heisler/The New York Times

“We came to express our views at a place where the President might see us, and were detained for hours as if we had committed a crime,” said John Rivera, one of the class action plaintiffs, who was a member of the Civil Service Employees Association, a prominent New York Union, for 20 years and is a Bushwick, Brooklyn resident. Mr. Rivera has been demonstrating in New York City since the 1980s. His first political action was protesting the Soviet Embassy after the shooting of an American soldier in Germany. He says he has never experienced a detention like this one.

“What happened to me, and my fellow protesters, was an eye opener. We were corralled like farm animals.” Mr. Rivera had been spending time in Liberty Park since September 19, 2011.

Though the New York Civil Liberties Union was successful in getting the NYPD to agree to restrictions on the use of barricades in 2008, the current suit alleges that the police department has violated those guidelines as well as the US Constitution.

“Under Commissioner Kelly the NYPD has considered itself above any restrictions when it comes to political protests, even restrictions it agrees to in front of a federal judge. We will look for judicial oversight of these tactics in order to defend New Yorker’s rights,” said attorney Mark Taylor.

“We were demonstrating peacefully and then with no warning we were detained for hours,” describes Jonathan Jetter, another of the plaintiffs, who is a professor at the State University of New York at Purchase and the owner of a midtown Manhattan-based music business. “We were denied access to legal representation and the press. I’ve taken part in many protests and this was the most chilling police response I’ve yet encountered,” he continued. Mr. Jetter lives in Queens.

“This felt like an attempt to scare us from participating in future protests,” explained Phoebe Berg of Brooklyn, another class representative. “I hate the fact that I can’t help but take into account the real possibility of being detained again, not allowed access to a water/food or a restroom for possibly hours, during the May Day General Strike and other future actions.”

Berg v Nypd – Complaint Filed

For a video of the events of November 30, 2011, go to:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hCTVwTLT3o

Press coverage of the events of November 30, 2011:
Josh Harkinson, They’re Holding Us Hostage, MOTHER JONES (Dec. 1, 2011), available at http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/11/occupy-wall-street-free-speech-zones-obama-protest- video

Matt Flegenheimer, Occupy Protestors Mobilize for Obama’s Visit, N.Y. TIMES CITY ROOM BLOG (Nov. 30, 2011), available at http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/30/ occupy-protesters-mobilize-for-obamas-visit

Joe Pompeo, Reporters Covering Occupy Wall Street Protest Outside Obama Fund-Raiser Say Police Barred Them, CAPITAL NEW YORK (Dec. 1, 2011), available at http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/media/2011/12/4378810/reporters-covering-occupy- wall-street-protest-outside-obama-fund-raise

John Del Signore, Protestors Blast ‘One Percent President’ Obama During $2.4M Visit to NYC, GOTHAMIST (Dec. 1, 2011), available at http://gothamist.com/2011/ 12/01/protesters_blast_one_percent_presid.php

Press Contact:
Mark Taylor
Rankin & Taylor, PLLC
mark@drmtlaw.com
office: 212-226-4507

###

Press Coverage of Berg v. NYPD

Nick Pinto, On the Eve of May Day, a Raft of Suits Against the NYPD Over Treatment of Protesters, Village Voice (Apr. 30, 2012), available at http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2012/04/on_the_eve_of_m.php#more

Repost of Rankin & Taylor Press Release, Occupy the Bronx (Apr. 30, 2012), available at http://occupythebronx.org/2012/04/demonstrators-request-injunction-restricting-nypds-use-of-metal-barricades/

Colin Moynihan, Protesters Accuse Police of Improperly Using Barricades, The New York Times (Apr. 30, 2012), available at http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/30/protesters-accuse-police-of-improperly-using-barricades/

John Del Signore, Occupy Protesters Sue NYPD For Forcing Them Into Free Speech Cages, Gothamist (April 30, 2012), available at http://gothamist.com/2012/04/30/second_ows_lawsuit.php

Ruthann Robson, Complaint Against NYPD for Barricading OWS Protesters, Constitutional Law Prof Blog (April 30, 2012), available at http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/conlaw/2012/04/complaint-against-nypd-.html

“Injured Bicycles Call for Action” – via CNN

The above clip will air as part of a CNN broadcast this Saturday and Sunday (4/21, 4/22) starting at 7:30am.

Continue reading: Bicycle Injuries: Is the Right of Way Fight Getting Ugly? – via CNN.com

NEW YORK (April 17, 2012) – Today, National Lawyers Guild New York City Chapter (NLG-NYC) Legal Observer Damian Treffs filed a lawsuit against the City of New York and the officers who falsely arrested him for legal observing a peaceful Occupy Wall Street demonstration the morning of January 1, 2012.  Mr. Treffs’ arrest and the excessive use of force by the NYPD was captured on video and broadcast live to thousands of viewers.  Mr. Treffs is represented by the Law Office of Rankin & Taylor.

The NYPD is long familiar with the NLG-NYC Legal Observers program, which has been a fixture at protests large and small around NYC since its founding in 1968.  Aggressiveness towards Legal Observers by NYPD police officers was a rarity until the Occupy Wall Street movement launched in September 2011. Historically, NYPD officers have shown respect to Legal Observers, easily identifiable by their bright green hats embroidered with the words, “National Lawyers Guild Legal Observer.”  Since the beginning of the Occupy Wall Street movement there has been frequent interference with both Legal Observers and journalists attempting to document the NYPD’s behavior.

Mr. Treffs, a seasoned Legal Observer, was recording the names of demonstrators arrested in the vicinity of Second Avenue between East 12th and East 13th Streets when he was himself arrested.  The videographer captured the moments before Mr. Treffs’ arrest and the excessive force used by the NYPD as eight officers converged on Mr. Treffs, threw him on top of the hood of a parked car, and violently cuffed him.  Mr. Treffs spent approximately six hours in police custody and was charged with disorderly conduct.  The New York County District Attorney’s Office declined to prosecute Mr. Treffs at his arraignment.

The video of Mr. Treffs’ arrest is available at http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/19508535. Mr. Treffs appears at approximately the 10 minute mark and is arrested shortly thereafter.

Treffs’ attorney Mark Taylor stated, “Observing and recording police conduct is not a crime whether done by Legal Observers, the press, or ordinary citizens.  Under Commissioner Ray Kelly the NYPD has had a free reign to arrest witnesses in violation of New Yorker’s constitutional rights. We will work to hold the officers involved and the NYPD accountable for their actions.”

Contact:
Mark C. Taylor, Law Office of Rankin & Taylor
212-226-4507, mark@drmtlaw.com

# # #

Read more on Gothamist.

Concerned New Yorker and Department of Buildings expert Richard Nagan, a partner in Nagan Ex, Inc., decided to find out what the scope of the approved work was – just how long could we anticipate this favorite spring and summer hang out would be off limits? But his request for the plans was met with a blanket denial by the Department of Buildings. The plans would not be made available unless Nagan got the permission of the building owners. The Department of Buildings claimed disclosing plans for surface waterproofing work without permission from Chase, the bank that has been keeping the public off the plaza for the last six months, would somehow be a danger to life or safety.

Today, Nagan Ex., Inc., represented by Rankin & Taylor, PLLC, filed a Freedom of Information lawsuit in New York Supreme Court for disclosure of the plans.

“The Bloomberg Administration is committed to making oversight of construction easy and transparent and that is right and just,” said Nagan. “The public has a right to know. Hiding from public view plans that clearly cannot in any way endanger anything is wrong and illegal and makes one wonder what they are trying to hide.”

The importance of the 2 ½ acre plaza to the fabric of life in lower Manhattan cannot be understated. Design of the plaza necessitated de-mapping a public street and turning the previously public throughway over to the private owner. The Planning Commission approved this de-mapping based on the benefits the plaza promised. When its construction was completed and the plaza opened in May 1961, the New York Times praised Chase for “bringing space, sunlight and beauty” to the city’s “stern, forbidding financial district.”  See Landmark’s Preservation Commission Designation Report for Chase Manhattan Plaza (Febraury 10, 2009).

Space, sunlight and beauty continue to be important.

“Public space in Lower Manhattan is vital to the civic life of New York City. For downtowners and our families, people eating lunch and as a geographic focal-point for our civic discourse,” says Paul Newell, Democratic District Leader for Lower Manhattan’s 64th Assembly District.

Press Inquiries Contact: Paula Z. Segal, paula@drmtlaw.com

Press:

Nick Pinto, JP Morgan Chase’s Life-And-Death Secret Waterproofing Plan, Village Voice Running Scared Blog (March 27, 2012), http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2012/03/jp_morgan_chase.php

The Law Office of Rankin & Taylor would like to speak with individuals penned in by the NYPD during an Occupy Wall Street protest on November 30, 2011, in the vicinity of the Sheraton Hotel located at Seventh Avenue and 53rd Street in Manhattan. A person who participated in the protest of President Obama’s visit to New York City and was penned in with other protestors and unable to leave the area for three hours approached Rankin & Taylor about a potential civil lawsuit.  Rankin & Taylor is now exploring bringing a federal class action lawsuit on behalf of these individuals detained by the NYPD.  If you were present at the protest and prevented from leaving by the NYPD, please contact Paula Segal, law clerk, at paula@drmtlaw.com or 212-226-4507.

Family of Mathieu Lefevre Sues NYPD for Withholding Crash Information

Streetsblog.org                                                                                                                        January 2, 2012

Brad Aaron

The family of Mathieu Lefevre has filed a lawsuit against the NYPD for refusing to release information related to the hit-and-run collision that killed the 30-year-old Brooklyn cyclist last October.

According to the complaint, filed in New York State Supreme Court on December 30 , NYPD denied a freedom of information request from Lefevre’s parents seeking records pertaining to the crash, on the grounds that the investigation is ongoing. The Lefevres appealed, citing their belief that the records in question are not exempt from disclosure under the law. NYPD failed to respond, effectively denying the appeal.

NYPD routinely denies access to information on deadly crashes, often based on the claim that releasing even the most rudimentary details would jeopardize crash investigations. The Lefevre lawsuit challenges that practice, based in part on the fact that NYPD has declared that no charges will be filed for Mathieu’s death.

The summary of the lawsuit, filed on behalf of the Lefevres by attorney Steve Vaccaro of Rankin & Taylor, reads in part:

NYPD admits that it possesses records requested by the Lefevres, but has stonewalled for nearly two months, refusing to disclose those records without a valid justification. The two grounds advanced by NYPD for withholding the records are completely lacking in merit.

First, NYPD asserts that it can withhold all records concerning Lefevre’s death, so long as its investigation of his death is still open. That is incorrect. FOIL exempts from disclosure only records the release of which would interfere with an ongoing investigation. NYPD does not suggest even the possibility of such interference.

Second, NYPD asserts that release of records concerning Lefevre’s death would jeopardize an impartial trial or adjudication. But NYPD has already announced there will be no criminal charges related to Lefevre’s death. Absent criminal charges, there is no right to a trial by jury, and therefore no chance of a tainted adjudication.

In December Vaccaro sent a letter to NYPD indicating that, according to officers involved in the case, the department’s Accident Investigation Squad has all but concluded that the truck driver who hit Lefevre, identified in the crash report as Leonardo Degianni, was unaware of the collision. The letter also points to conflicting accounts of the collision from NYPD, and says Vaccaro was told that the AIS lost vital evidence. (Disclosure: Vaccaro represented Streetsblog for our freedom of information request to obtain documents from CUNY related to the effort to erase the Prospect Park West bike lane.)

“The Lefevres seek only to learn the truth about the death of their son,” reads the suit summary. “NYPD’s stated reasons for hiding the truth from the Lefevres plainly lack merit.”

Steve Vaccaro is representing the parents of Mathieu Lefevre, a 30-year-old artist tragically killed by a truck driver while cycling in Williamsburg, in litigation against the NYPD to ensure a full and fair investigation of the crash.  Read about the NYPD’s handling of the investigation into Mathieu’s death in the article by Jim Dwyer of the New York Times below, and watch Transportation Alternatives’ Noah Budnick speak about the NYPD and the Lefevre case on “Inside City Hall,” linked here.

After a Son Is Killed, Facing a Police Runaround

By: Jim Dwyer
THE NEW YORK TIMES – Published December 6, 2011

Robert Stolarik for The New York Times
A so-called ghost bike stands in memory of Mathieu Lefevre, an artist from Canada who was killed on his bicycle in a crash in October.

The Lefevres — mother, father and one of their surviving sons — took the first flight to New York, spent the night with a friend, and the next morning went directly to the city morgue on Winthrop Street in Brooklyn. The second of the Lefevre sons, Mathieu, 30, had been run over by a truck two days earlier, just after midnight on Oct. 19, while he was biking home to Williamsburg. The truck did not stop.

His parents looked at pictures, then the remains, under a sheet. “The detective at the morgue told us to go to the 90th Precinct to do two things,” said Erika Lefevre, Mathieu’s mother. “A detective there would be able to give us an accident report, and we would be able to get our son’s personal effects.”

Before they left, the police detective at the morgue also told the Lefevres, who are from Canada, that they would need a lawyer; she gave them a business card. “We didn’t quite understand how the legal system worked in the United States,” Ms. Lefevre said. “We thought we would get a police report, that the information would be in the report, and we would proceed from there.”

“The detective gave us the card as a polite gesture,” she added. “I think she wanted to help us. We discarded it. We didn’t think this was a procedure we had to do.”

The 90th Precinct station house proved to be a House of No, as Ms. Lefevre described it: the family was told at the desk that there was no detective available to speak with them, that Mr. Lefevre’s property was not there and that no report on the accident was available.

So they waited.

“After some time elapsed, I called the detective at the morgue, who had given us her phone number in case we ran into problems,” Ms. Lefevre said. Eventually, a detective in the 90th Precinct explained that the person handling the investigation of their son’s death would not be back for several days. “The detective we saw said he had no access to the information, that they do not share files,” Ms. Lefevre said.

After four hours, she said, they left.

More people are killed in traffic accidents than by guns in New York City; death by motor vehicle is rarely treated as a crime. Someone died in city traffic every 29 hours, on average, from 2005 to 2009, according to a study by the city’s health and transportation departments. While New York has a stellar record compared with other big cities in the United States and has drastically improved in the last decade, the rate of traffic fatalities is far worse than in many major cities in Europe, according to another study, by the advocacy group Transportation Alternatives.

As a boy growing up in Alberta, in the countryside of western Canada, Mathieu Lefevre staged turtle Olympics, skied, built forts, played hockey and soccer. Everyone in the family was an avid cyclist. In Montreal, where Mr. Lefevre studied art, his work was hailed as witty and caustic, and it won honors.

In March 2010, he moved to New York and joined the 3rd Ward artists collective in East Williamsburg. “He wanted to establish his art internationally,” Ms. Lefevre said. “It was his dream. He loved living in New York. People have been so generous and compassionate to us.”

Five days after their visit to the 90th Precinct station house, they heard from a detective. Meanwhile, they read articles that quoted anonymous police sources stating, variously, that Mr. Lefevre had run a red light near the scene of the accident, at Meserole Street and Morgan Avenue, or that he had been passing a truck on the right as the truck was turning, making him a casualty of a right hook.

“I specifically asked about the red light, and the detective said there was no evidence of that,” Ms. Lefevre said.

On the night of the accident, the police found the vehicle they believed had hit Mr. Lefevre, parked on Scholes Street, two quick turns from the accident scene. It was a crane truck marked with the name Imperium Construction, according to an accident report, which identified the driver as Leonardo Degianni. Contacted on Tuesday, Mr. Degianni would not say if he had been behind the wheel. “It hasn’t been proven yet,” he said. “I have no comment.”

The authorities have said that the driver was not aware of striking Mr. Lefevre, although Steven Vaccaro, a lawyer hired by the Lefevres to get information, said that a diagram on the accident report showed that the truck hit the bicycle from behind. In any case, no charges have been filed.

“What happens to the driver is not of concern to us,” Ms. Lefevre said. “It is our greatest desire that we will finally learn the truth about the circumstances of our son’s death. We hope there will be a fair and unbiased investigation.”

A week after visiting the station house, the Lefevres were given their son’s belongings. They had been in the station house all along.

By: Colin Moynihan

The New York Times – August 29, 2011

On Fifth Avenue, somewhere between the University Club and Tiffany, Sojourner Hardeman sat before an empty storefront recently, displaying a cardboard sign that detailed her abilities as a typist and her familiarity with computer software.She advertised “very reasonable rates (expenses low),” adding, “all assistance appreciated.”

Her presence amid the high rents of Fifth Avenue may have surprised some, but then, Ms. Hardeman, 42, possesses what amounts to a Do Not Harass card.

After leaving a job last August and becoming homeless in September, Ms. Hardeman began panhandling on Fifth Avenue. One afternoon in March, she said, police officers arrested her there and detained her in a precinct station house before releasing her without charges.

The arrest led to a lawsuit, filed in May in Federal District Court in Manhattan. The lawsuit has not been resolved, but she has already taken a small measure of victory.

On Aug. 12, a federal judge in Manhattan approved a stipulation between the City of New York and Ms. Hardeman: the city agreed not to arrest or issue a summons to her, unless there was probable cause that she had broken the law. In addition, the city agreed that it would instruct officers in the Midtown North Precinct on the definition of the disorderly conduct statute by Sept. 15.

The stipulation came after Ms. Hardeman complained to the judge that she had been harassed several times by police officers after she filed the lawsuit.

Although it is a matter of standard law that no person should be arrested without probable cause, the fact that Ms. Hardeman managed to secure a judge-approved stipulation was something of a feat.

Ms. Hardeman referred to her style of solicitation as “passive panhandling,” involving little more than sitting quietly and letting her cardboard sign do the talking for her.

“I never broke the law,” she said, describing her time on Fifth Avenue.

There is a law against aggressive panhandling, but Ms. Hardeman’s lawyer, David B. Rankin, said other ways of asking for money were “clearly constitutionally protected.”

The lawsuit stemmed from an encounter in late March. Ms. Hardeman said two officers asked her for identification. She told them she had none, and the officers arrested her. She was taken to the Midtown North Precinct station house, where she remained for about five hours until the police released her without filing charges, she said.

Two months later, Ms. Hardeman filed a lawsuit asserting that the arresting officers had violated her 4th and 14th Amendment rights. Two days later, court papers said, a police sergeant called her on her cellphone asking to discuss the case. Ms. Hardeman said she referred the sergeant to her lawyer.

According to Ms. Hardeman’s complaint, officers approached her four times in July and ordered her to leave the spot in front of the empty storefront, at one point, saying: “You can’t be here. This is Fifth Avenue.”

Each time, Ms. Hardeman said, she refused to leave. On one occasion, officers handed her a disorderly conduct summons, saying she was blocking pedestrians. On another occasion, she said, officers briefly handcuffed her and placed her in the back of a police car before issuing another disorderly conduct summons.

“Midtown sidewalks are high-volume arteries, and blocking pedestrian traffic can cause safety issues,” Philip Frank, assistant corporation counsel at the city’s Law Department, said in a statement. “The stipulation simply indicates that Ms. Hardeman will not be arrested without probable cause. That’s the law for everyone.”

Ms. Hardeman denied that she had blocked pedestrians, saying that the recessed area she sits in is 20 inches deep and that she takes up only 10 inches of a 16-foot-wide sidewalk.

Sam J. Miller, the lead organizer with an advocacy group, Picture the Homeless, said he had heard many complaints from homeless people, accusing the police of arbitrarily issuing them disorderly conduct summonses.

“We have found hundreds of incidents of the police using disorderly conduct wrongly against homeless folks,” Mr. Miller said, adding that many of those charges were later dismissed or could not be substantiated.

Ms. Hardeman said she had been homeless off again on again for about 20 years. She said she quit a job as an assistant at a law firm last August, hoping to find something more fulfilling. A month later, she said, she lost a rented room in the South Bronx. For a while, she worked in Times Square, selling tickets to a comedy club. Then, in March, her resources and stamina depleted, she arrived on Fifth Avenue with a plastic milk crate and her sign.

On a good day there, she said, she can collect enough for necessities: a MetroCard, a rented storage space, the phone bill and some food.

Ms. Hardeman said she did not relish the disagreements with the police. But, she added, after losing her home in the Bronx, she was unwilling to walk away from her post on Fifth Avenue.

“I’m not planning for this to be a career,” she said as she sat on her crate, watching the passers-by. “I’m just trying to meet expenses.”

By: J. David Goodman

THE NEW YORK TIMES

Christian Hansen for The New York Times

One recent day, the lawyers there parsed bike-law issues, like “dooring zones” and when is it legally acceptable to ride outside a designated lane, while downstairs, each of their bikes were expertly locked to a scaffold along Broadway in TriBeCa.

The small firm is preparing to bring a class-action suit against New York City on behalf of cyclists over summons handed out for what it contends are phantom violations — bike behavior that it says is not illegal in the city. It is another sign that New York’s bike fights are moving from the streets to the courtroom.

When it comes to bike law, it seems, the wheels of justice no longer grind slowly. Since a ticketing blitz early this year, cyclists in New York have faced stepped-up police enforcement of red-light and other, less-obvious rules, like having adequate lights or not riding with earphones in both ears.

Add to that a highly publicized lawsuit challenging a bike lane along Prospect Park West in Brooklyn, thrown out by a judge last week, and bike law can seem like a growing opportunity for lawyers who make bikes their business.

In addition to Rankin & Taylor, the New York bike bar includes Adam D. White, a Manhattan lawyer who regularly commutes to work by bicycle and has represented injured cyclists, and Gideon Orion Oliver, an East Village lawyer who has represented cyclists involved with the Time’s Up rides that have frequently resulted in clashes with the police.

Bike rules are a surprisingly tangled area of the law. The city’s myriad regulations have confused unsuspecting riders and have occasionally tripped up even the police officers responsible for enforcing them.

Cyclists have reported being ticketed for equipment violations like riding without a bell. A bell is required by law — though an unscientific street survey indicated that, for many riders, their voices are their only warning systems. Others have been ticketed for riding without a helmet (not required for adults), and in one widely reported case, for riding with a purse hung over the handlebars. A Police Department spokesman later said the summons should not have been issued. The department did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment on the helmet violation.

Many cyclists are confused about their rights, which is where the new breed of bike lawyers comes in. One common question: are cyclists required to ride in a bike lane if one is available?

“There are 101 reasons that a cyclist might be outside of a bike lane,” said Steve Vaccaro, an avid cyclist and a lawyer at Rankin & Taylor. But aside from the obvious ones — to avoid a hazard or obstruction — it’s “highly contextual,” he added.

For example, it is legal to leave the bike lane to make a turn, and cyclists are allowed to prepare to make a turn by getting to the appropriate side of the street. But just where one can move out of the lane — 50 yards away, or two blocks, perhaps — is not specified.

While it is a good idea to be aware of the rules, he said, a rider would still have to explain the reason in court if ticketed.

That is Peter McCormick’s plan. He said he would contest in traffic court next month a ticket for running a red light in Central Park.

Bike lawyers were not optimistic about his chances. “In red-light cases, there’s not a lot you can do to get a cyclist off,” Roger Goldfinger, a lawyer at Rankin & Taylor, said. But he noted that cyclists should not pay the hefty surcharge, included in the total fine, that applies only to motor vehicles.

A spokesman for the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles confirmed that the fine indicated on a red-light ticket includes $80 in surcharges and fees that do not apply to bikes. Cyclists should pay only $190.

While the mundane details of traffic rules can create the most confusion, most cyclists do not need a lawyer to fight a ticket, but might need one if they are hurt by a vehicle

“For those people who think it can’t happen to them — I have a file of a person it happened to,” said Scott Charnas, a personal-injury lawyer who has represented many New York cyclists. He formed a relationship a decade ago with Bob Mionske, a West Coast bike lawyer and Bicycling Magazine columnist, who recommends Mr. Charnas to New York riders.

Mr. Charnas’s current clients include a delivery cyclist severely injured by a passing car. “In that case, the rider turned away to avoid the opening door and was then hit by a car,” he said. The deliveryman had a broken leg and other injuries, Mr. Charnas said, and will never be able to ride a bike again.

The accident highlights what can happen in the so-called dooring zone, the area next to a vehicle where its door could hit a passing cyclist. The lawyers at Rankin & Taylor also represent bike riders in personal-injury cases. But suing the city to make it more cycling-friendly, they said, could help prevent such injuries and ensure that cyclists are treated equally on the road.

“It’s not unrealistic to enforce traffic laws,” Mr. Vaccaro said. But he contends that the police have been issuing tickets based on sections of the state’s traffic law — for example, requiring riders to keep right or preventing them from riding two abreast — that he said do not apply in New York City. This is the basis of the class-action suit.

Paul J. Browne, the department’s chief spokesman, disputed that tickets were handed out in error. “Police officers write summonses for observed violations,” he said. “Although some cyclists are surprised to discover it, they must comply in most instances with the same rules that apply to motorists.”

Regardless of how the planned suit turns out, does taking a legalistic view of cycling sap its fun?

Not for Mr. Vaccaro. He recently quit a large corporate firm after 14 years to join the firm of David Rankin and Mark C. Taylor, two former Portland, Ore., bike messengers who kept their passion for biking after moving into the law.

“I’m doing it full speed ahead,” Mr. Vaccaro said of his bike work.

Mr. Rankin chimed in: “Of course, we’d all rather be outside.”