It’s near-impossible to ride public transit without encountering splashy ads from attorneys who, as the head of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority puts it, “seem to think the MTA is actually spelled ATM.”
Janno Lieber has repeatedly backed Gov. Kathy Hochul’s push for auto insurance reforms that are designed to cut costs and fraudulent claims, citing how the MTA is frequently targeted as a “deep pocket” in costly personal injury lawsuits.
The MTA paid $561 million in claims in 2025, up from $454 million one year earlier. Budget documents do not spell out how much personal injury cases accounted for that more than half-a-billion dollar sum.
But as transit officials and the governor talk tough against court claims and “billboard lawyers,” personal injury firms plaster splashy ads on subway cars, in train stations and at bus stops, turning their lawyers into familiar faces while trolling for clients in the very system they sue.
There’s “Michael the Bull,” whose ubiquitous ads show Brooklyn-born lawyer Michael Lamonsoff flexing in a superhero costume with a bull on his chest and another on a Captain America-like shield. His website boasts of $12 million in payouts for clients injured in a train derailment and other seven- and eight-figure settlements.
“I’m someone who is confident enough to portray myself as a person equivalent to a superhero,” Lamonsoff told THE CITY. “I feel like the work I do is that of a superhero.”
While Lamsonsoff — who says he has an “infinite” number of cases against the MTA — casts himself as a Superman-type hero in his subway ads, transit officials contend he and other personal injury lawyers are better off as villains.
“When there’s an auto accident, the lawyers tend to look around and say, ‘Was there an MTA bus anywhere nearby?’” Lieber said at a January committee meeting of the authority’s board. “Because if we can be made responsible for even 1% of that crash, there are all of a sudden very big potential payouts because we are the deep pocket.”
Often inside the same subway car, ads for Harris Keenan & Goldfarb hover over straphangers’ heads, with partner Seth Harris glowering next to the words, “Nice on the outside. Killer in the courtroom.”
Then there are the spots for “America’s Largest Personal Injury Law Firm,” some of which feature a cartoonish image of a man in a suit and atop a pigeon flying above Manhattan.
“That’s me,” chirped John Morgan, whose ads appear in Yankee Stadium, on Times Square billboards and across the subway system.
“I look at advertising kind of the way I look at a meal — you need some greens and you need some starch and you need a protein and you need a dessert,” Morgan told THE CITY. “I’ve got outdoor, I’ve got radio, I’ve got television, I’ve got social, it’s just part of the meal.”
After co-founding the namesake firm nearly four decades ago in Orlando, Fla., Morgan is unapologetic about the approach to putting its name in front of millions of New Yorkers during their daily commutes. He said he does not “give a f— about pissing off the MTA” through advertisements or lawsuits, and trashes the subway as “filthy.”
“Where accidents happen is where there is lack of maintenance, a lack of cleaning, failure to inspect, poor lighting, poor security,” Morgan said. “And when you get down in the bowels of the subway, you’re in a real cesspool.”
The MTA pulled in an estimated $183 million in advertising revenue last year, according to the office of State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. That’s up from $173 million in 2024, $136 million in 2019 and $115 million going back 15 years.
The numbers do not break down how much of that money comes from personal injury lawyers, who purchase ads through the advertising giant Outfront Media.
“Advertising at the MTA is an important revenue generator and ad placements in our system are surging in popularity,” said Mary John, the authority’s director of commercial ventures. “We get a range of advertisers from financial institutions, universities, cultural programming, all the way down to laser hair removal and ambulance chasers.”
Morgan — whose image also appears over the face of Lady Liberty in another subway ad for his firm — said he also can’t pinpoint how much money he throws at transit advertising.
“I’ll just say this, they’re not giving it away,” he said. “The MTA is not giving it away.”
Morgan laughed off the “billboard lawyers” label, even as an American Tort Reform Association report last year found that the firm dropped more than $218 million on ads in 2024, outspending its closest competitor by a more than 4-to-1 ratio.
“Guess who else is on billboards?” he said. “The makers of unsafe products and drugs — it’s ok for them to be on selling their s— drugs and s— products, but God forbid somebody comes in to say ‘I’m going to hold them accountable.’”
Lamonsoff, who said he was nicknamed “The Bull” by clients for going after adversaries “like a bull would,” has a collection of bull statues and figurines from all over the world. He said the lawsuits his firm files are an outgrowth of conditions within the transit system that can include staffing shortfalls and a lack of attention to safety protocols.
“At the end of the day, lawsuits are not the problem, they are the result of the problem,” he said.
Lamonsoff brashly warned of “more trouble ahead” for the MTA if conditions within the transit system that lead to lawsuits are not addressed.
“Let me be clear,” he said. “To the MTA and to Lieber: If you mess with ‘The Bull,’ you get the horns.”
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