Luneckas, Darin H.

Terry's career as a lawyer began in 1984 after graduating from Vermont Law School and the University of Pennsylvania. He worked for 9 years with Gerard Pellegrini, founder of the firm Pellegrini and Seeley in Springfield, where the main focus of practice was workers' compensation law and personal injury claims.

He brought hundreds of cases to hearings and trials, including many jury trials and appeals to higher courts, including the Massachusetts Appeals Court and the Supreme Judicial Court, where in 1989 Terry won a case, favorable to the consumer, which established a new legal standard in Massachusetts for the sale of food products. Phillips vs. Town of West Springfield is still the leading food warranty case in Massachusetts.

Many of the cases Terry has handled for clients in the workers' compensation and personal injury areas of law have been published in trial reports, local and national news articles, law journals, judicial decisions and legal treatises.  

In 1993, Terry started his own law practice at its present location on the corner of State and Main Streets in Springfield. He has a strong commitment to Springfield and to this location because of its central location with ample parking and access to the state and federal civil and administrative courts, but also because his great-grandfather, grandfather and father all worked the majority of their careers on the corner of State and Main Streets.

Terry has chosen to keep his practice focused on individual's needing advise and action against insurers and corporations that resist or deny claims of personal injury and disability. Recently he has focused his attention in the area of private disability plans, ERISA plans; an area of particular abuse by insurers who are aided by federal laws allowing them to circumvent traditional state remedies, Terry believes this is a challenging area of the law and one that ultimately needs federal legislative reform.

Terry believes and practices the whole-client approach. When someone has been injured or develops physical, mental or emotional incapacity, he or she deserves full attention to all areas of life, which have been affected, and all means of providing justice and financial relief.

An injury on the job, for example, often involves a Social Security Disability and Medicare claim or a so-called third party claim against someone who was careless in causing the injury. The injury may involve retirement options, Medicare or Medicaid liens or private health care liens. It may involve discrimination, wrongful termination, or medical malpractice. Injury and loss of work may require detailed analysis of earning capacity loss, return to work options and use of federal job protection under the Family and Medical Leave Act.

Terry has developed skill in all aspects and potential affects of personal injury and incapacity. He even will provide a simple will and health care proxy to a client, free of charge.

Lawyers will often say they handle personal injury due to an automobile collision, but don't handle a Social Security claim. Often an inexperienced lawyer or a television or yellow pages advertiser will claim expertise in workers' compensation, only to refer' the case to another lawyer, give the work to an associate. Often that same lawyer will take the worker's compensation claim, but be without experience in third-party claims or negligent physician claims.

Terry believes this piecemeal approach is a disservice. It either results in an injured person remaining ignorant of all that is available to help financially or the referral to another attorney after losing much time and energy.