The adoptive parents of a young boy with special needs have been awarded $13.5 million in damages against Jewish Family and Community Services, Inc. (JFCS) for negligently misrepresenting and failing to disclose material facts related to his history during the adoption process. The jury found that JFCS acted with wanton and willful disregard for the human rights and safety of the family and adoptive child.

In one of the largest jury awards in Florida history, a young girl has been awarded a $15 million verdict against the Florida Department of Children & Families (”DCF”) for negligently investigating abuse reports that her mother had abused drugs endangering the child. The eight-year-old girl who is referred to as H.H., was tortured and suffered permanent traumatic brain injury and quadriplegia from repeated episodes of abusive head trauma and is now completely dependent on others for all aspects of her daily functioning.

Christopher Nevarez, the father of Makenzie Nevarez, a 6-month-old baby girl who suffered catastrophic injuries and later passed away from blunt force trauma, has been awarded $4.5 million in damages in a wrongful death case involving the Broward Sheriff’s Office for failure to protect his daughter.

As a resident of Tampa Bay Academy (the Academy), a young boy (“TB”) was repeatedly and violently raped, sodomized and sexually abused by other residents who were minors with known histories of sexual and physical aggression, especially against younger, more vulnerable children. TB was a small child who was developmentally disabled, deaf and had an IQ below 60. Academy officials knew that TB and vulnerable children like him were being left alone with dangerous sexual predators; some were even caught in the act of rape.

Attorneys representing eight developmentally disabled foster children who were placed in what one judge called a “house of horrors” foster home settled with New York state adoption and child welfare agencies and their state-contracted providers in 2014 for $26 million.

In 2013, a Palm Beach County jury returned a $5 million verdict against the Florida Department of Children & Family Services on behalf of a child, CMH, who was repeatedly raped by a known child-on-child sexual predator. Child sexual abuse lawyer Howard Talenfeld represented the family in the case.

Claims bill for Relief of Pierreisna Archille, a mentally disabled person, by and through Darlene Archille, for injuries and damages sustained as a result of the negligence of employees of the Department of Children and Family Services.

Howard Talenfeld, on behalf of representatives for Angela, a 2-year-old foster child left brain-damaged after a near-drowning, brought suit in Pinellas County, Florida, against the Florida Department of Children and Families, foster parents Ronald and Joyce Bryson, and private care providers Help a Child Inc., and Family Continuity Program, Inc. The parties settled to ensure Angela would receive the skilled medical care her doctors said she would need for the rest of her life.

Child sexual abuse attorney, Howard Talenfeld, negotiated a $2.2 million settlement with a community-based care provider for two young girls who were repeatedly sexually abused by their mother, even after experts warned she was a threat to their safety. The case became an example of threats and warnings ignored and responsibility denied.

Child abuse injury lawyers Howard Talenfeld and Stacie Schmerling represented the estate of a 14-year-old foster child who died by suicide while live streaming on Facebook from her foster parent’s bathroom. The lawsuit alleged that several parties failed to protect the child from abuse, neglect, and mental health deterioration while in foster care.

This case involves the tragic circumstances that led to the injury of three-year-old R.M. and the death of his one-year-old sister. Justice for Kids® attorney Howard Talenfeld was instrumental in filing civil rights complaints for the children, paving the way with legal precedent for many other children to recover for their injuries.

Florida child abuse attorney Howard Talenfeld represented two developmentally disabled, minor boys who were placed in a series of group homes and left to suffer repeated physical, emotional and sexual abuse by other children and staff. Attorneys negotiated a settlement with the facility’s owners and then worked with experts who formulated life care plans for the sexually abused, developmentally disabled children.

Over a sixteen year period, DCF and its private contracted community based providers in Miami-Dade County, FL failed to have the child appropriately assessed, failed to provide an increased foster care board rate despite the child’s significant needs, failed to ensure the child received services from the Agency for Persons with Disabilities, and put financial incentives of management ahead of helping foster children.

A $1.575 million settlement brought an abrupt end to a Fort Lauderdale trial that questioned the Broward Sheriff’s Office for its management of abuse allegations involving an infant who suffered injuries and brain damage, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported.

Florida child abuse attorney Howard Talenfeld represented the family of a 4-month-old girl who brought suit against a community-based care provider for placing the girl at “substantial risk” for continued abuse and for failing to offer voluntary protective services (“VPS”) to prevent such further risk.

A 2012 settlement negotiated for an undisclosed sum negotiated by child abuse attorney Howard Talenfeld against the Florida Department of Children and Families and various private providers settled a horrific wrongful adoption, negligence and civil rights case. Talenfeld argued the defendants were deliberately indifferent to and neglected the child’s essential needs after he was removed from his parents by state child protection agents.

J.F., an abused, disabled child from Miami-Dade County, FL, received a $1.9 million settlement because of civil rights violations after asserting claims against employees of Florida’s Department of Children & Families for failing to remove him from an abusive group home where he was sexually assaulted by other children. A trust was created with the settlement proceeds, which was placed in a trust just before his adoptive parent passed away. The proceeds from this special needs trust still provide support for J.F. to this day.

Justice for Kids® attorneys Stacie Schmerling, Howard Talenfeld and Justin Grosz represented a former foster child in a federal lawsuit filed in the Southern District of Florida against community-based child welfare agencies and an emergency shelter for failure to protect the then 17-year-old foster child from being sold into sex trafficking in 2012 and held captive in a Fort Lauderdale hotel. The case settled for an undisclosed amount against the child welfare agencies responsible for failing to provide her an appropriate placement and for placing her into the custody of the traffickers. The claim was also settled for an undisclosed amount as to the motel that turned a blind eye and knew she was being victimized in the hotel.

Child abuse attorneys Howard Talenfeld and Stacie Schmerling represented a former foster child in a case in Miami-Dade County, FL, against a private community-based lead agency and its subcontractor for failing to protect the child from physical and emotional harm in a group home when he was the victim of a “cockfight” encouraged by a group home employee.

A foster boy was placed in the Broward County, FL, foster home of a pedophile by a private agency that failed to locate prior arrest records and police reports that should have prevented the licensure of the home. Florida Administrative Code requires all licensing agencies to obtain copies of reports of local law enforcement agencies where the foster care applicant has lived. In this case, the agency omitted finding local law enforcement reports that would have revealed an arrest for soliciting sex from a teenager in a shopping center, as well as other reports that would have been red flags.

Florida child abuse attorneys settled a case on behalf of a 16-year-old girl against a private agency that owned and operated an emergency shelter in Palm Beach County, FL, for failure to protect the child from sexual assault by a male shelter employee.

The child was reunified with his biological parents despite warnings that he was at significant risk of harm. The father drove the family to Broward County, FL, where he shot a man and held the family hostage. This resulted in a SWAT standoff during which time the father stabbed the child, stabbed the child’s non-verbal autistic brother to death, stabbed the mother, and stabbed himself to death.

In 1998, Howard Talenfeld instituted a class action with the Youth Law Center against the Department of Children and Family Services (“DCF”) in the case of Ward v. Kearney. The case led to a consent decree, significant institutional reforms, and a near-tripling of the budget for the Broward County, Florida, foster care system.

On January 26, 2001, DCF removed sixteen minor children and two developmentally disabled adults from the Gainesville, Florida home of Nellie Johnson due to allegations of egregious abuse and neglect. The children, who had all been adopted, reported that they were subjected to horrific abuse: Nellie Johnson repeatedly and without mercy beat them on a daily basis with pipes, boards, and her fists, subjecting them to physical and psychological torture. However, this wasn’t the first report that DCF had received that Johnson was abusing her twenty-three adopted children.

The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta upheld the right of three foster siblings to sue for damages resulting from sexual abuse committed against them while in foster care. The precedent-setting decision (H.A.L. v. Foltz) focused on the unsupervised placement of three pre-school-aged foster children with two adolescent and teenage foster kids known to be sexual predators. Left alone together in the same home, the younger foster children reportedly were repeatedly raped by the older boys.

This was a precedent-setting federal civil rights claim brought by six siblings (collectively called “John Roes” to protect the minors’ identities) who were egregiously physically, sexually and emotionally abused and neglected in a foster/adoptive home in Broward County, Florida.

In Baumstein v. Sunrise Communities, 738 So. 2d 420 (Fla. 3d DCA 1999), Howard Talenfeld successfully argued to the Third District Court of Appeal to establish a private cause of action for damages based upon the violation of Florida’s Bill of Rights for the developmentally disabled under § 393.13, Florida Statutes.

This lawsuit was filed in the Middle District of Florida against private child welfare providers and individual employees on behalf of the estate of a seventeen-year-old foster child who died while she was on runaway. The suit brought wrongful death and survival claims under state law causes of action and civil rights violations, alleging the defendants allowed the child’s mental health to deteriorate while in foster care and encouraged her to run away.

This civil rights lawsuit involved a claim by a foster child pursuant to 42 USC § 1983 in federal court in Palm Beach County, FL and for negligence against various Florida Department of Children & Family employees and a private mental health crisis stabilization unit for violating the due process rights of a foster child who was confined for almost one year in a crisis stabilization unit because there were no appropriate placements for discharge. The Plaintiff settled this lawsuit against the private agency for an undisclosed amount and the DCF and its employees for $1.6 million.

A Florida woman who sued a psychiatrist and a now-closed group home, saying they caused her autistic son's death by giving him too much medication, filed her malpractice lawsuit seeking damages from the doctor and group home that owned a chain of group homes shut down by the state of Florida in 2007.

Disclaimer: Most cases result in a lower recovery. Results may not be typical and reflect awards before deduction for attorneys’ fees and expenses. It should not be assumed that your case will have as beneficial a result. In Webb v. APD, 939 So. 2d 1182 (Fla. 4th DCA 2006), Howard Talenfeld, as child abuse attorney for Joshua Webb, established the standard used to determine eligibility based upon intellectual disability in the State of Florida. At the age of 9 years old, Webb entered Florida’s foster care system. Prior to applying for APD services, Webb had twice been evaluated. In 1997, at the age of 10, he received a verbal IQ score of 66, a performance IQ score of 81, and a full scale IQ of 71. In 2003, he received a verbal IQ of 66, a performance IQ of 75, and a full scale IQ of 69. The eligibility established Webb’s right to receive home and community based services, a Medicaid benefit that could be used for Medicaid benefits worth over a million dollars in a lifetime. Read more here.

Disclaimer: Most cases result in a lower recovery. Results may not be typical and reflect awards before deduction for attorneys’ fees and expenses. It should not be assumed that your case will have as beneficial a result. Foster child abuse attorney Howard Talenfeld represented several former-foster kids who settled with the city of New York in December 2012. The city agreed to pay $9.7 million to settle the lawsuit. The money will help the former foster kids, some of whom were destitute and homeless at the time of the settlement. Judith Leekin made a science of gaming the foster care system and abusing foster kids in her care – all 10 of them. The New York woman welcomed into her home foster kids – and the public assistance stipend that came along with them. Once kids were in her home, they were subjected to years of torture, abuse, and mistreatment. This was in addition to the existing disabilities that several of the children suffered. Leekin restrained the children with plastic ties and handcuffs, beat them with sticks and hangers – and personally lived a lavish lifestyle. Eventually, Leekin moved from New York and resettled in Central Florida with 10 of the children who are now in their 20s in 30s. Soon, stories emerged of their imprisonment, abuse, lack of medical care and hygiene, and seclusion. In all, Leekin fraudulently collected some $1.65 million in adoption subsidies from the city. In 2007, Leekin was arrested and sentenced to 20 years in prison. The former foster kids who had in effect lost their childhood filed suit, claiming New York’s Administration for Children’s Services did not effectively provide for their care. Renowned foster child abuse attorney Howard Talenfeld led a team representing several of the former-foster kids in December 2012. They settled with the City of New York, which agreed to pay $9.7 million to settle the lawsuit. The money will help the former foster kids, some of whom were destitute and homeless at the time of the settlement.

Disclaimer: Most cases result in a lower recovery. Results may not be typical and reflect awards before deduction for attorneys’ fees and expenses. It should not be assumed that your case will have as beneficial a result.   David Ashcroft, a 20-year-old apprentice jockey, suffered catastrophic injuries when his horse veered across the racecourse toward a negligently placed exit gap, which caused his horse to attempt to leave the track. Ashcroft lost control of the horse and fell to the ground where he was run over by another horse, rendering him a quadriplegic. The case was tried before a jury, which rendered a $10 million verdict. On appeal, the Third District Court of Appeal reversed the verdict, finding that David Ashcroft voluntarily assumed the risk and exposed himself to the danger. On further appeal, The Supreme Court of Florida reinstated the verdict after it determined that although horse-racing is a dangerous sport, Ashcroft did not assume the unreasonable risk of a negligently designed and maintained racetrack. Read Full Article

Disclaimer: Most cases result in a lower recovery. Results may not be typical and reflect awards before deduction for attorneys’ fees and expenses. It should not be assumed that your case will have as beneficial a result.   AD was tragically killed while riding a jet ski on a lake in Miami. He was only 15 years old. Justin Grosz, through an investigation on behalf of AD’s parents, discovered that the events which led to his death actually started in the wake of Hurricane Andrew, over 15 years earlier. An Australian pine tree, over 80 feet tall, had been knocked down in the storm at the bank of a privately owned lake. The homeowner tried to push the tree into the lake, to sink it, but the tree was too large and dense. Rather than sink it or have it removed, the homeowner left the tree on a shallow shelf at the edge of the lake, with the trunk extending over 50 feet into the navigable part of the waterway. When the tide was low, the tree was exposed and visible but as the tide rose, the tree was obscured, just beneath the surface. The homeowners who lived on the lake hired a lake maintenance company to take care of the lake. Over the years, the homeowners became aware that the tree was jutting into the waterway and the lake maintenance company even struck it on multiple occasions while cleaning the lake. Despite knowledge of the tree’s existence and that it had been struck before, no one ever removed the tree. AD was invited by a friend to go jet skiing and had never been on that lake before. As he came around the lake, the jet ski struck the obscured tree, redirecting him into a dock. In an extremely difficult and hard fought case, which spanned closed to five years, involved hundreds of defendants, depositions and a host of legal issues ranging from riparian rights to water safety maintenance and accident reconstruction, justice was finally achieved and the case was ultimately settled confidentially in excess of seven figures.

Disclaimer: Most cases result in a lower recovery. Results may not be typical and reflect awards before deduction for attorneys’ fees and expenses. It should not be assumed that your case will have as beneficial a result.   At the eve of trial, attorney Howard 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, and even the admission of the child aggressor. This case was successfully concluded after our investigator obtained the statement of the perpetrator who explicitly described how he was able to evade staff of the facility who were watching a football playoff game instead of protecting the children. Read Full Article

Disclaimer: Most cases result in a lower recovery. Results may not be typical and reflect awards before deduction for attorneys’ fees and expenses. It should not be assumed that your case will have as beneficial a result. In 2013 a Palm Beach County jury returned a $5 million verdict against the Florida Department of Children & Family Services on behalf a child repeatedly raped by a known child-on-child sexual predator. Florida child abuse attorney Howard Talenfeld represented the family in the case. Florida DCF had removed the predator, J.W., from his natural parents in May 2002 following allegations of abuse and neglect. State officials then placed J.W. with the parents and family of Junior, an 8-year-old boy. Shortly after the placement, Junior was sexually assaulted by J.W. Only later did the family learn that DCF knew J.W. to be a child-on-child sexual predator. The evidence at trial revealed that DCF placed a sexual perpetrator in the home who was psychotic, homicidal and who had previously had sexually assaulted his toddler sister. J.W. later sexually assaulted another young girl. Junior’s family contended that DCF should have shared this information. Junior did not disclose the assault to his parents until 2005. J.W. was then removed from Junior’s home. At the time of the case, Junior was 20; J.W. was 21 and serving time in a Florida prison on a larceny charge. During the court case, even the defense expert agreed that Junior suffered from severe depression and post-traumatic stress disorder as the result of the sexual assault. The Palm Beach County jury returned a $5 million verdict against the Florida Department of Children & Family Services on behalf of Junior.

On Friday, March 23, 2018, Governor Rick Scott signed CS/HB 6509, a claims bill that directs the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF) to pay more than $5 million awarded by a Florida jury to C.M.H., a victim of sexual abuse by a child in foster care. This marks the largest known recovery in Florida for one child who was emotionally and sexually abused against a governmental defendant, DCF. Children’s rights attorney and Talenfeld Law Founder Howard Talenfeld served as co-counsel for C.M.H. The bill is the result of a verdict and judgment against DCF on behalf of C.M.H., who was sexually assaulted at age nine by an 11-year-old foster child (“J.W.”) that DCF had placed at the home without a safety plan. The lawsuit was originally filed in 2006 on the family’s behalf against DCF and its case management subcontractors. The jury found C.M.H. had $10 million in damages but the judgment was only entered for $5 million against DCF because the jury also found that the parents were 50 percent at fault. DCF had removed J.W., a ten-year-old child, from his natural parents due to allegations of abuse and neglect in May 2002 and placed him with the parents of C.M.H., then eight. C.M.H. did not disclose the assault to his parents until 2005, just before J.W. was removed from the home. In court, C.M.H.’s father testified at trial that if he had known J.W., the attacker, had himself been sexually assaulted, he would not have permitted him to stay in their home. He was not aware of his terrible history of sexual, physical and emotional abuse. Even the Defense expert, Dr. Stephen Alexander, agreed that C.M.H. suffered from severe depression and post-traumatic stress disorder as the result of the sexual assault.