About
Daniel J. Halloran III
Mr. Halloran returned to school and obtained a Bachelors of Arts in History and Anthropology in 1997 from City University of New York, graduating cum laude and completing all but dissertation on a Master of Arts degree in Archaeology while being inducted into the National Honors Society. He performed field research in County Cork, Ireland in 1996-97 in the archaeology of the Norman and Viking periods, and their impact on Germanic and Brehon Common Law. He was published in several archaeological and anthropological journals on the Germanic Origins of the Common Law and on Indo European roots of legal systems and community formation in Viking Europe.
Thereafter, he attended St. John’s University School of Law on scholarship, and earned a Juris Doctor in 2000; he was President of the Federalist Society, Secretary of the Student Bar Association, board member in the Irish Law Society, Senior Bar & Board of the Criminal Law Institute; Best Advocate in the Frank J. Rogers Criminal Trial Competition in 2000, Runner Up in 1999, and was Runner-Up Best Advocate in both the 1999 & 2000 John J. Hart Civil Trial Competitions. He was named to the National Who’s Who of Law Students for 1998-1999.
Mr. Halloran co-edited the Fall 1999 New York State Bar Association, Criminal Justice Journal article, “A History of Criminal Law”; he authored the sections from Germanic Origins through the Colonial Period. He likewise co-edited and co-authored the Spring 2000 edition’s examination of Miranda Rights in New York, in “Life After Dickerson”. In 1998 he interned as a clerk for the Honorable Robert J. Hanophy, J.S.C. in New York State Supreme Court, Queens County, Criminal Term. In the spring of 1999 he was hired by the Bronx County District Attorney as a Legal Assistant. In September of 1999 he was appointed a Special Assistant, assigned to the Appeals Bureau. In January of 2000, he interned in Queens County District Attorneys Office and was assigned to the Criminal Court Bureau. Mr. Halloran was thereafter accepted into the LL.M. program of the State University of New York at Buffalo on scholarship, and commenced studies in the fall of 2000 and worked as a Special Assistant in the Erie County District Attorney’s office, Homicide Bureau. He completed studies for the LL.M. program in Criminal Law in the spring of 2001, and returned to New York City.
Currently employed in a firm on Long Island, Palmieri & Castiglione, LLP., he has appeared in hundreds of criminal and civil matters before Federal, State, Local, and Administrative Courts, as well as their Appellate terms throughout New York. He has successfully conducted 10 bench and 40 jury trials, and has been involved in significant motion practice resulting in hundreds of suppression/in limine hearings; a suppression hearing in Nassau County was published based on his lead-counsel defense 2005 NY Slip Op 51063, related to search and seizure issues; he succeeded at the appellate level in reversing a criminal conviction on the weight of the evidence, 2006 NY Slip Op 67758; and has been involved in federal multi-jurisdictional commercial contract litigation, 425 F.Supp.2d 523 arguing choice of laws provisions. In 2007 he won a trial order of dismissal in a DWI case in Nassau County (in one of the first trials of such by DA Kathleen Rice) and it was the subject of an article published in the New York Law Journal (NYLJ-6-12-2007), the decision was also published as a slip opinion. In the past three years he has prevented a top-count conviction in all but two criminal cases he has tried, and has won full acquittals in 11 of his last 15 felony trials, and all 12 misdemeanor trials conducted. In January of 2007 he became trial counsel to the Bongiorno Law Firm, handling all manner of post-note of issue litigation for them. He has since litigated commercial matters involving Anti-Trust violations of the Sherman and Clayton Act, scores of personal injury cases, and several corporate actions including derivative law suits.
Mr. Halloran successfully litigated matters ranging from Medical Malpractice to Federal Writs for Habeas Corpus Relief before the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, state court felonies including Attempted Murder and Drugs & Weapons matters, Actions in Partition, Commercial Tenancy, Environmental Remediation/Navigation Act violations, and Franchise Conflicts, as well as Federal Firearms Licensing, ECB Hearings, National Transportation Safety Board appearances, and Motor Vehicle Department proceedings. He has squared off with such top-tier firms as Rivkin Radler, Lord Bissel Brook, Morgan Lewis, and with the District Attorneys Offices of Oswego, Onondaga, New York, Nassau, Queens, Kings, the Bronx, Richmond, Suffolk, Westchester, and Putnam counties. Mr. Halloran is a member of the International Bar Association, Federal Bar Association, Association of Federal Criminal Defense Attorneys, American Bar Association, New York State Bar Association, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, New York State Trial Lawyers Association, Association of Trial Lawyers of America, the New York State Defenders Association, and the Nassau, Queens, and New York County Bar Associations.
He is admitted to the New York State Bar and the Federal Bars of the Northern, Southern, Western, and Eastern Districts of New York, and Second Circuit Court of Appeals as well as the US Supreme Court and the Armed Forces Court of Appeals; his admission to the Washington DC Bar and The Courts of International Trade are pending. Mr. Halloran has been an of counsel attorney to the New York City Patrolman’s Benevolent Association and is an approved closing counsel for JP Morgan Chase, and has been recognized by the Swarthmore’s Who’s Who American Registry of Outstanding Professionals in Law since 2005 and both Marquis and Madison’s Who’s Who in American Law since 2006. He currently sits on the Felony Panel of the 18B Assigned Counsel Plan of NYC and is a Court Designated Referee. He works with the board of the New York chapter of the Republican Party’s Liberty Caucus and is a member of the Advisory Council of the Republican National Lawyers Association. Mr. Halloran holds a Vigil Honor from the Boy Scout’s of America and is a member of the National Eagle Scout Association, where he is still active. In addition, he also does work on numerous Not for Profit boards and 501c3 charities.
Best of luck, Dan. The Heathen community throught the country is behind you 100%, (I am an Asatruer from MI and also involved in politics).
WE live in you district and want to attend your event at All Saints Church tomorrow. We cannot find a telephone number for your office to allow us to check the time and the address. Certainly we WANT YOU TO WIN!!
Councilman Dan Halloran, Are you related to Colonel Halloran, Chief, United States Military Liaison Mission Berlin? If so,I can be contacted at my E-mail address. USSFSSG@HOTMAIL.COM
I was upset and confused to see your backing of the FDNY Vulcan society in believeing the last two FDNY exams were intentionally disparate against minorities. I sure you are misinformed. Please read what Deputy Chief Mannix, who grew up in Whitestone, had to say on the matter.
“Last month, U.S. District Court Judge Nicholas Garaufis ruled that written exams administered to FDNY applicants in 1999 and 2002 were invalid because they only tested cognitive skills — reading and written comprehension, while oral comprehension and oral expression were largely ignored. The result was a large disparity between white and minority applicants’ successes.
Now the judge may force the city to hire three minorities for every two new white firefighters.
“How does a written test know what color you are?,” Mannix asked, noting that he is speaking as an individual, not for the department. “The job of a firefighter is consistently evolving. There are always new procedures, equipment and challenges that require you to know how to read.”
Those new challenges, according to Mannix, include dealing with terrorism-related issues and medical emergencies; servicing radiation and carbon monoxide detectors; and using new pieces of equipment such as life-saving ropes and fire window blankets.
“We are not advocating that you have to be functionally illiterate to be a firefighter,” said Darius Charney, an attorney representing the Vulcan Society, a fraternal order of black firefighters and the plaintiffs in the case. But he added, “The reading level required is way lower than what they test for, which is at a mid-college level.”
Charney says his organization, the Center for Constitutional Rights, surveyed and deposed dozens of FDNY firefighters of various ranks, many of them white, to determine which skills are most important to the job. Oral communication skills and the ability to follow directions overwhelmingly topped the list.
Charney explained that other skills related to understanding the science of fires as well as how to handle radiological and biological attacks are taught during fire academy training.
Mannix disagreed and placed great importance on reading comprehension. He says he studied diligently for three years in order to acquire the necessary knowledge to be promoted to lieutenant. “I walked around with a milk crate full of books,” he said. “I studied everything from the mundane to the highly technical.”
He suggests that applicants who are having difficulties passing the FDNY’s written exam invest in tutoring, prep courses or other resources aimed at improving test scores. Charney, however, does not believe that is a feasible solution.
“Most of the applicants come from outside of New York City,” he said. “Schools in the suburbs are superior to schools in the city. That’s just a fact. So, unless you fix the public education system, there is going to be a disparity between how whites score on standardized tests as opposed to blacks and Hispanics.”
If the city does not appeal the judge’s ruling, it will be forced to create a new exam; establish a process for the victims to receive monetary compensation and retroactive seniority; and institute priority hiring — selecting two blacks and one Hispanic from a designated pool as part of every five new individuals hired.
Mannix fears the ruling could snowball into a myriad of detrimental consequences. He believes it would add underqualified individuals to the force making the job more dangerous. And, he says, it will create a sense of resentment within the firehouse, especially if these same individuals are promoted over more competent white counterparts.
Charney says that since the questionable exams did not accurately test the skills necessary to be a firefighter it is unfair to assume that the unchosen applicants are unqualified, though he acknowledges that the judge’s ruling may cause resentment.
“They may be under the impression that this is just a group of black people who are looking for a free ride, but that is not what this is about,” Charney said. “This is about fixing the testing system to accurately measure who is qualified for the job.”
In order to correct that misconception, he believes everyone in the Fire Department from captains to officers should provide support for minority employees in order to protect them from being subjected to a hostile work environment.
Mannix, meanwhile, hopes to spread his message by expanding Merit Matters nationwide. The organization will continue to tackle FDNY issues, refute what it sees as false claims, seek help from outside agencies when needed, engage the public through the use of the media and demand equal treatment for all.
“We believe in equal opportunity, not guaranteed results,” says the group on its website. “We want standards to be high, meaningful, equally applied and blind to race, gender or ethnicity. Written and physical exams should ensure that the most applicants are chosen; they should not be designed to have as many applicants as possible pass.”
Members of the New York City Council’s Black, Latino and Asian Caucus held a press conference at City Hall on Feb. 3 urging the mayor to let the judge’s ruling stand.
It’s time for Mayor Bloomberg to act,” Paul Washington, former president of the Vulcan Society, said in a statement. “He can either be remembered as the mayor who helped integrate FDNY or as the mayor who tried and failed to stop FDNY’s integration. Either way, 145 years of an all-white Fire Department will almost certainly be coming to a close.”
Bloomberg declined to comment about the FDNY case or whether the city would appeal the judge’s decision, though Stu Loeser, the mayor’s press secretary, offered the following statement: “The Fire Department is justifiably proud that their outreach work led to minorities now being more than one out of every three people on the list to be hired as firefighters.”
In another effort to promote diversity within the FDNY, City Councilman Leroy Comrie (D-St. Albans) who also attended Wednesday’s press conference, has re-introduced legislation that would give any firefighter candidate who has a diploma or GED from a city high school or testing center an additional eight-point credit on the exam.
“Despite the advances our society has made from the White House to the Supreme Court, there are still challenges and hurdles that have to be overcome with respect to color barriers,” Comrie said in a prepared statement. “In New York City and in Albany, an ugly stain has been perpetuated, and it is incumbent for people of goodwill to stand up and say this is wrong.”
Mannix disagrees with the eight-point credit, which when combined with a residency credit would give an applicant a 13 point advantage. “That’s astronomical,” he said. “We’re chipping away at standards.”
He said that is especially true because the 2007 test, was “designed to get as many applicants as possible to pass,” according to information given to Mannix by an unnamed FDNY source.
The remedy phase of the case, which will establish a road map for how the dispute should be resolved, will begin in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn on Feb. 16. Charney is “fairly certain” the city will appeal the judge’s decision when given the opportunity.
“This is a fairly complicated case and will go on for months,” Charney said.
Washington, however, hopes the case will proceed swiftly. “We need to stop being in denial and accept what’s been decided and move forward,” he said. “It has been confirmed by independent groups who have no axe to grind with the city.”"
Please do not support the Dumbing Down of the FDNY. It is too important. You would be putting the lives of your constituents in jeopardy.