Florida Foster Child Abuse Lawyer Earns Top Rating from Peers for 29th Straight Year
Fort Lauderdale attorney Howard Talenfeld has been designated a AV Preeminent® Peer Review Rated attorney by Martindale-Hubbell. The rating attest to Talenfeld’s legal ability and professional ethics based on the opinions of other lawyers, client review ratings, self-reported professional credentials and other fact-based performance data.
Talenfeld is Florida’s premier foster child advocacy, child abuse and sexual abuse attorney exclusively representing children who have been harmed while under the care or watch of child welfare agencies or state-contracted childcare organizations.
He today is managing partner of Talenfeld Law Group LLC, a Fort Lauderdale-based firm protecting the rights of abused, neglected and disabled children.
Talenfeld has a history of handling major class-action law suits dealing with the foster care system, children’s mental health system, juvenile justice system, state psychiatric hospitals and the provision of Medicaid services to the developmentally disabled. He pioneered defending such cases by advocating for the improvement and reform of human service systems, while protecting states’ rights and avoiding federal over-sight.
He was part of the team that represented ten foster children who were placed in what one judge called a “house of horrors” foster home in a settlement with New York state adoption and child welfare agencies and their state-contracted providers in 2014 for $26 million.
In a 2013 case, Talenfeld earned a $5 million jury verdict against the Florida Department of Children & Family Services on behalf a child repeatedly raped by a foster child and known child-on-child sexual predator who had been placed in the plaintiff’s home.
In a case stemming from child-on-child rape, Talenfeld successfully negotiated a $4 million settlement on behalf of a child repeatedly raped in a residential facility. Administrators at the center were ignorant of systemic abuse, repeated reports by and from state officials, the testimony of another minor child who was raped while there, as well as a psychiatrist and the child aggressor.
To learn more about Talenfeld’s history and commitment to children’s rights, read his biography.