Justin S. Teff

Justin S. Teff, Esq., is the managing partner of Kirk & Teff, LLP. He was born in Washington, D.C., and raised in Port Washington, New York. He graduated from the State University at Albany in 1998 and received his law degree from Albany Law School in 2001. Mr. Teff was admitted to practice in 2002 and has since focused his career on all aspects of workers’ compensation law and practice. Prior to joining the firm in 2007, Mr. Teff worked for the defense litigation firm of Stockton, Barker & Mead, as well as the Special Funds Conservation Committee.

Mr. Teff is a past President of the New York State Injured Workers’ Bar Association (IWBA) and a member of the New York State, Albany County, and Ulster County Bar Associations. He is co-chair and a longstanding member of the New York State Bar Association Committee on Procedures for Judicial Discipline and is a past member of the NYSBA Special Committee to Review the Code of Judicial Conduct. He is a member of the NYSBA Committee on the State Constitution and the NYSBA Committee on Bylaws. Mr. Teff is also a Fellow of the New York Bar Foundation.

Mr. Teff is an avid writer and lecturer on various subjects. He has taught numerous Continuing Legal Education seminars throughout the state on workers’ compensation matters. His academic article “The Judges v. the State: Obtaining Adequate Judicial Compensation and New York’s Current Constitutional Crisis” (72 Alb. L. Rev. 191 [2009]) was cited by the Appellate Division, Second Department, in its decision in Pines v. State of New York (115 AD3d 80 [2014]), and his article “After Burns v. Varriale: Essential Lessons for Workers’ Compensation Third-Party Action Attorneys” (NYS Bar Journal, January 2011) was cited by the Third Department in Stenson v. New York State Dept. of Transportation (84 AD3d 22 [2011]). Mr. Teff has authored numerous amicus curiae briefs for the Court of Appeals and Appellate Division on behalf of the IWBA.

In 2022, Mr. Teff successfully argued the landmark case of Matter of Liuni v. Gander Mountain before the New York State Court of Appeals. The Court found in favor of our client and reversed the decisions below, but more importantly, it held that in general, a worker may receive separate schedule loss of use awards for permanent injuries to different joints in the same bodily member if supported by the evidence. This distinguished our case from a line of prior decisions that had been very damaging to workers and restored an important right to New York’s injured veterans of industry.