80 years Representing Civilian Contractors, Veterans, and Their Families

Free Legal Help

Our fees Are Paid By the insurance company,
You NEVER pay

  • Injured Civilian Contractors supporting U.S. Armed Forces should ALWAYS be paid compensation.
  • We represent you ANYWHERE in the world.

Free Legal Help When You Need it!

For the past 80 years, we have helped injured contractors around the world recover hundreds of Millions of U.S. Dollars in wages and medical benefits. 

We Fly To You, Wherever You Are In The World

Our Defense Base Act (DBA) Law Firm – Garfinkel Schwartz represents civilian contractors who have supported the U.S. Government as Civilian Contractors. We also specialize in assisting longshoremen who work the ports, docks, coasts, rivers and U.S. waterways. Clients have come to Garfinkel Schwartz’s lawyers for the past 8 decades obtaining denied medical care, past owed wages and money for their losses.

  • We work to get you the medical treatment and doctors you need at no cost to you.
  • We fully prepare you for every milestone of your case (deposition, mediation, settlement or trial).
  • We keep you regularly informed.
  • We will make sure you receive all the money, wages, and medical care you are entitled to.

What injuries
are
covered?

What injuries are covered? We work to provide compensation, medical, and death benefits to covered veterans, service members, and civilian employees injured or killed in the course of employment, whether or not the injury or death occurred during their shift. Injuries can be physical, psychological or presumptive.

Common physical and psychological injuries include but are not limited to:

  • Back
  • Neck
  • Shoulders
  • Arms
  • Chest
  • Carpel Tunnel
  • Hips
  • Back or Knee Pain
  • Legs
  • TBI
  • Loss of Hearing
  • PTSD
  • Anxiety
  • Depression

Presumptive injuries are conditions presumed to have been caused by the harsh conditions people were exposed to during the course of their service or employment such as burn pits, pollutants, and unsanitary conditions. 

Examples of presumptive injuries include but are not limited to the following:

  • Cancer
  • Pulmonary injuries
  • Hepatitis
  • Bacterial infections
  • Immune system disorders
  • Long COVID effects

The Garfinkel/Schwartz family have helped injured workers for for generations – great grandfather, grandfather, father, and sons

Schedule A Free Case Review

When you hire the Garfinkel Schwartz law firm, you hire a large and powerful team of lawyers, paralegals, legal researchers, staff, accountants, and other dedicated professionals. We help you get the very best medical care. Garfinkel Schwartz makes sure your doctors get paid. Therefore, you don’t pay for your doctors or lawyer EVER.

What Our Clients Say

WE ARE HERE BECAUSE WE CARE

Find out who receives our help. Read their stories, do they sound familiar? 

Be amazed by how their life was changed after they found us. 

80 consecutive years -
Hundreds of Millions of Dollars for our Clients

Learn more about U.S. Laws protecting EVERYONE who works on a military base or injured by a terrorist attack.

DEFENSE BASE ACT (DBA)

The Defense Base Act was established in 1941 for injured overseas non-military workers. It is an extension of the Longshore and Harbor Workers Compensation Act of 1927. DBA provides medical, disability or death benefits to U.S. government contract employees working overseas or their survivors, regardless of nationality.

ANTI-TERRORISM CLAIMS

United States service members, veterans and contractors who were injured in the Iraq War or Afghanistan, in the Iraq Al-Asad Air Base Attack, in Ukraine, may be entitled to significant compensation against banks that helped fund terrorist groups. 

TERRORISM INJURIES

United States service members, veterans and contractors who were injured in an act of terror are entitled to seek compensation against banks that helped fund terrorist groups.

The law makes it a crime for anyone to knowingly provide material support or resources to designated foreign terrorist organizations.

LONGSHORE AND HARBOR WORKERS COMPENSATION ACT

If you’re injured while working on water, anywhere in the United States, you are covered by the Long Shore and Harbor Worker’s Compensation Act. We will not charge you money for getting you compensation while you are undergoing medical treatment.

HOW WE BEGAN

History and Heritage

The law firm is named for founder and attorney Alan Garfinkel, and in memoriam for deceased Longshore and Defense Base Act lawyer, John M. Schwartz and his father Sydney Schwartz.


John Schwartz and his father were Defense Base Act lawyers for more than 50 years. They represented injured workers and contractors around the world.

Alan Garfinkel and John M. Schwartz worked side by side for more than a dozen years. Together, they helped thousands of men and women working as overseas civilian contractors and longshoremen on U.S. Federal waterways who were denied DBA and Longshore Act compensation claims.

Brian Wiklendt and Giselle Garcia are Defense Base/Longshore Act lawyers and lead counsel for the firm. Schwartz’s grandsons while attending law school served as legal assistants and medical researchers working on the Garfinkel Schwartz team.

The Garfinkel-Schwartz families and law firm have a military service history that goes back more than 106 years, World War I with Alan Garfinkel’s grandfather, World War II with Alan’s Father and 3 uncles and Vietnam with John Schwartz. Currently, Garfinkel Schwartz has a lawyer that is in the Active Army Reserves and serves in the United States Military as a Lieutenant Colonel. Garfinkel Schwartz and our law firm family continue to devote their careers and lives in obtaining medical care and money for civilian contractors and longshoremen who get sick or injured on the job.

Schedule A Free Case Review

The sooner you hire an experienced Defense Base Act Lawyer the better.

No matter where you live, what language you speak, we can help you.

Garfinkel Schwartz Law, Operating Worldwide
800-393-2999 | support@defensebaseactlaw.com

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