Valley Stream lawyer sues state

Valley Stream attorney Albert D’Agostino is fighting back. After finding out last month that the state comptroller plans to revoke his annual $108,088 public pension — again — D’Agostino filed a federal lawsuit on Dec. 10 alleging that his civil rights were violated.

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court, alleges that Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli and three of his attorneys denied D’Agostino his right to due process when they revoked his pension after determining that he was working as a private contractor. The lawsuit claims that D’Agostino’s 5th and 14th Amendment rights were violated, and that he should have been given a hearing as well as adequate notice of the claims against him before his pension was revoked.

D’Agostino’s attorney, James Roemer, said he is seeking compensatory and punitive damages, claiming that D’Agostino’s reputation was tarnished by the ordeal, but Roemer would not say how much money he and his client are looking for. He did reference a similar case — Morgenstern v. Nassau County — in which the defendant recouped more than $500,000 in damages because of a 14th Amendment violation. “His case is worth several times more than they awarded Morgenstern,” Roemer said of D’Agostino.

In 2000, D’Agostino began collecting a state pension for 28 years of service — 21 of which were granted retroactively — even though he had been paid as a private contractor. D’Agostino was reported as an employee of the Lawrence, Valley Stream 30 and North Merrick school districts.

District 30 has since replaced D’Agostino’s law firm, Minerva and D’Agostino. However, officials there have said the switch was not because of the pension issue and that his firm was one of the finalists after it went out to bid for law services in the summer of 2008.

Lawrence Board of Education President Murray Forman said that he and the other District 15 trustees stand firmly behind the 65-year-old D’Agostino as he battles the state over his pension. “The position of the Lawrence school board has been that we are supportive of Mr. D’Agostino,” Forman said, “and as long as there are no final adjudicated negative findings regarding this issue, we are sure that everything he has done has been proper.”

In April 2008, DiNapoli’s office ordered D’Agostino to pay the state back his collected public pension of $605,874. The Valley Stream-based attorney filed a lawsuit that October to fight the comptroller’s determination, which he said was a result of “a lot of people looking for pieces of political red meat.” The judge in that case ruled that the state did not give D’Agostino due process when it came to the termination of his pension, but added that it could be taken away again if the state found any problems.

That was the first time a court reversed DiNapoli’s revocation or rescission of a pension. His office revoked the pension benefits of 62 professionals statewide, most of them attorneys, after a review began in April 2008.

D’Agostino also represented the Nassau County Planning Commission and the Town of Hempstead Public Employment Relations Board before his retirement in 2000. As a result of his many years of employment by municipalities, he collected nearly 28 years of service credit in the pension system. He said his pension requests were approved on multiple occasions by the state.

Several calls to the state comptroller’s office were not returned.