One N.Y. Lawyer Dies, Another Pleads in Separate Crashes on Same Buffalo Street
A renowned Buffalo, N.Y., defense attorney died yesterday, along with his wife, after their car was broadsided by another vehicle that ran a red light at a high rate of speed.
Retired trial attorney John Condon Jr., 86, was a legal icon who continued to teach at the University of Buffalo after his more than 40-year legal career, and was active in bar activities, reports the Buffalo News.
Praised for his generosity to other attorneys as well as his legal skills, Condon represented the Allman Brothers Band, among other prominent clients. “He gave 100 percent of his talents and his tenacity for his clients,” says Joseph LaTona, a prominent Buffalo lawyer who was a partner of Condon’s in the 1970s.
Meanwhile, the newspaper reports in a different article, another local lawyer pleaded guilty today in a hit-and-run accident that killed a college sophomore earlier this month on the same street a short distance away.
John Duffy, 41, who has a law office in Hamburg, pleaded guilty to a felony count of leaving the scene of an accident, and is expected to be disbarred because of the felony conviction, the newspaper writes. He could be sentenced to as much as seven years in prison.
“Duffy’s lawyer, Daniel J. Chiacchia, said Duffy is ‘devastated’ over the incident but drove off thinking only that he had struck a garbage can,” the newspaper writes. The attorney was identified as the culprit with the help of a surveillance videotape shot a short time before the accident at the drive-through window of a nearby fast-food restaurant.
He has since admitted to his role in the accident that killed a 19-year-old college sophomore as she was walking alongside South Park Avenue at about 1:30 a.m. on Oct. 18.
Earlier coverage:
ABAJournal.com: “NY Lawyer Arrested in Hit-and-Run Accident”
