A New York appeals court Tuesday suspended the license of a personal injury lawyer for failure to adequately respond, after a client alleged to a grievance committee that the lawyer had settled her personal injury case but hadn't given her a share of the settlement or paid a Medicare lien that was to be paid from it.

The attorney, David Alan Tessler, whose website says he's licensed in both New York and New Jersey, also faces a separate complaint lodged with a New York grievance committee by a client who claimed Tessler didn't contact him from 2016 to the time of the grievance complaint in June 2021, and that he discovered, via the assistance of a different attorney, that a personal-injury suit Tessler brought on his behalf was dismissed in 2019.

The Appellate Division, First Department court's decision to impose an immediate, interim suspension on Tessler is based on his failure to adequately respond to the First Department's grievance committee's numerous attempts to get his answer to the two ethics complaints. His failures, the decision says, included not appearing at a grievance committee deposition after he was served with a judicial subpoena.