Howard M. Talenfeld, a preeminent children’s rights attorney, was recently selected by his peers for inclusion in The Best Lawyers in America© 2017 in the field of Civil Rights Law.
Since it was first published in 1983, Best Lawyers® has become universally regarded as the definitive guide to legal excellence. Best Lawyers lists are compiled based on an exhaustive peer-review evaluation. For the 2017 Edition of The Best Lawyers in America©, 7.3 million votes were analyzed, which resulted in almost 55,000 leading lawyers being included in the new edition.
Talenfeld is the Founder and Managing Partner of Talenfeld Law, the first law firm in Florida to focus exclusively on protecting the rights of physically and sexually abused, medically fragile, foster and other at-risk children. His work on behalf of at-risk individuals has earned multi-million dollar awards and resulted in sweeping judicial and legislative reforms.
Among his wins, Talenfeld earned significant damages awards and settlements against New York City and the Archdiocese of Brooklyn, which together paid more than $27 million in the case of Judith Leekin, a foster mother whose “house of horrors” imprisoned, abused and starved 10 disabled foster children. In Florida, he is responsible for scores of million dollar plus victories in federal civil rights claims against DCF employees and providers also resulting in the landmark decisional law protecting the rights of children and disabled persons. Talenfeld was among the first attorneys nationally to utilize the federal civil rights damage statute 42 USC section 1983 to recover damages for injured foster children. In the 2001 case Roe v. Florida Department of Children & Family Services he recovered a $5 million damage award, an amount in excess of Florida’s sovereign immunity limit of $100,000, on behalf of six foster children. In another example, the state agreed to pay more than $14 million in a case where foster mother Nellie Johnson repeatedly and brutally beat her foster children, even after the Florida Department of Children and Families knew of the harm they were enduring.
Earlier this year, Talenfeld was honored with the University of Miami Law Alumni Association’s Alumni Achievement Award and received the Professional Excellence Lifetime Achievement Award from the Daily Business Review. Additionally, he has been recognized for his efforts with The Florida Bar’s “President’s Award of Merit” and the Florida Bar President’s Pro Bono Service Award for the 17th Judicial Circuit. He also received Legal Aid’s Russell Carlisle Award for child advocacy law. Talenfeld is founding president of Florida’s Children First, the state’s preeminent nonprofit that advocates for foster children and the developmentally disabled.
About Talenfeld Law
Talenfeld Law is led by one of the nation’s preeminent children’s rights attorneys focusing exclusively on protecting the rights of physically and sexually abused children, developmentally disabled children and other at-risk children. Learn more at 844-4KIDLAW or http://www.justiceforkids.us.
