PETER DEBLASIO

DeBLASIO--Peter. Peter Edward DeBlasio died peacefully at his home on Friday, December 18, 2020, of natural causes, his wife by his side. He was 91. He was a legendary trial lawyer, revered not just among New York's bench and bar, but by the nation's very top attorney organization The Inner Circle of Advocates, and honored as one of the world's 500 best lawyers by the International Academy of Trial Lawyers. Part of The Greatest Generation he was The Last Lion of New York, incomparably charismatic and indefatigably competitive. During his four years at Columbia College, he played on the football, baseball, basketball and golf teams, was the University-wide handball champion, and in 1947 was part of the legendary Columbia squad to defeat #1-ranked Army, 21-20, still considered the greatest upset in college football history. After a stint in the Navy, he entered Columbia Law School and upon graduation went straight to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York where he was a federal prosecutor for four years. The rest of his 50-year career he devoted to defending his fellow New Yorkers as the State's leading personal injury plaintiff's attorney, taking more than 500 cases to trial and setting many records, among them the first 8-figure verdict in New York history. But he also on five occasions represented criminal defendants - including one of the two men charged with the 1975 abduction of the Seagram Company's 21-year-old heir Samuel Bronfman, which kidnapping and subsequent trial gained intense national attention in an era before the internet -- winning acquittals at all five of those trials. Peter was unrivalled and unmatched, a genius in the courtroom, in a class of his own. As one of his long-time friends recently said, on behalf of all who ever knew him, if there is anyone yet on earth like Peter, nobody has met them. During his final years, he wrote a book with stories from his trials and memoir of his growing up the son of Italian immigrants, published in the summer of 2020 under the title "Let Justice Be Done: A New York Trial Lawyer's Odyssey Through the Last Half of the 20th Century." He leaves behind his wife of 34 years, Joyce DeBlasio, his daughters Alessandra DeBlasio and Caralee DeBlasio (both from his first marriage to Jo Warner), and his only grandchild his beloved Allan Haynes, Jr. A wake will be held on Tuesday, December 22, 4pm-8pm at Casey Funeral Home, 350 Slossen Ave., Staten Island, NY, 10314. The funeral will be on Wednesday, December 23, 11am at St. Ann's Church, 101 Cromwell Ave., Staten Island.