Jeanine Pirro, the former Fox News host now serving as U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, has filed a slip-and-fall lawsuit against her hometown of Rye, New York, and Con Edison after tripping over a piece of plywood embedded in gravel on a public road. She's seeking $250,000 in damages.
The Daily Mail reported that the incident occurred on August 28 on Boston Post Road in Rye — about a mile from Pirro's five-bedroom home. According to her statement to Rye police, Pirro was looking both ways before crossing the street when she caught a protruding block of wood that had been left amid gravel laid by Con Edison workers around a steel plate covering an underground gas main.
"Next thing I know I am face planted on my right side."
Pirro told responding officers she suffered blood on her lips and hands, broken glasses, and an open scrape on her knee. Two men nearby helped her to the sidewalk, where she sat on the grass to reorient herself.
The Rye Police Department returned the next day and photographed the scene. The responding officer noted the wood was "speculated to be a part of construction work on the road."
The amended complaint, filed in Westchester County, paints a more serious picture of the injuries. Pirro's attorneys wrote that she sustained:
The suit claims she was "confined to bed and badly bloodied" and "continues to experience pain and suffering." Her attorney in the case is Al Pirro, her ex-husband, who was pardoned by President Trump during his first term after a series of tax-related crimes. That's a detail that will generate its own headlines, but it's legally unremarkable. Ex-spouses practice law. Pardoned attorneys still hold bar cards.
Both Con Edison and the Rye Corporation Counsel declined to comment, citing pending litigation.
Here's where it gets uncomfortable for Pirro: she appeared on Fox News Sunday on August 31 — three days after the fall — with no visible bruising on her face. The lawsuit describes injuries to the "head, eye, face, and shoulder areas." Television cameras are unforgiving. The absence of visible damage doesn't disprove the claims, but it does create a gap between the legal narrative and the public record that any competent defense attorney will drive straight through.
Slip-and-fall lawsuits are a dime a dozen in American courts. They are also, fairly or not, the punchline of every tort reform argument conservatives have made for decades. A prominent conservative figure filing a $250,000 negligence claim over a piece of wood in the road will hand the left a talking point they didn't earn — and that's worth acknowledging plainly.
The underlying facts of the case aren't inherently unreasonable. If Con Edison workers left debris embedded in a gravel patch on a public road, and the city failed to inspect or remediate the hazard, someone has liability. Infrastructure negligence is real. Utility companies cut corners. Municipal oversight lapses. These are the kinds of hazards that tort law exists to address.
But $250,000 for a fall that left no visible bruising within 72 hours? Pirro is 74 years old, and falls at that age can produce injuries that don't always photograph well — soft tissue damage, persistent pain, and shoulder impingement.
The medical reality may well justify the claim. But the legal filing reads like it was drafted for maximum leverage, not maximum credibility. The phrase "serious personal injuries" is doing a lot of heavy lifting when the most specific documented evidence is a scraped knee and broken glasses.
None of this diminishes Pirro's record. Three terms as Westchester County district attorney. A career on the bench. Confirmed as U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia on August 2. She has earned her position through decades of legal work, and a personal injury claim doesn't change that calculus.
What it does is remind everyone — left, right, and center — that the American tort system looks the same no matter who's filing the paperwork.
Conservatives have long argued that frivolous or inflated personal injury claims clog courts and drive up costs for municipalities and businesses. Whether this particular claim is frivolous will be decided by the facts. But the framing — a powerful federal prosecutor suing her quaint hometown and a utility company over a stumble — will test how consistently the right applies its own principles on litigation culture.
Pirro has every legal right to file this suit. The question isn't whether she can. It's whether she should have.
