At Justice for Kids®, We Fight for Kids
Justice for Kids® (“JFK”), a division of Kelley Kronenberg, is a premier law practice dedicated to protecting abused, disabled, and injured children nationwide, who are harmed in child welfare and disability systems. Our mission is to be fierce advocates for children’s rights, to make personal injury recoveries for children injured, abused, or neglected by, or while in the care of, the governmental and private agencies who were supposed to protect them, and to drive systemic change in child welfare policy throughout the United States.
We bring personal injury and civil rights claims on behalf of children, through their guardians and next friends, including legal aid counsel, attorneys ad litem, guardians ad litem, professional guardians, adoptive parents and biological parents. Every child deserves to be safe and loved, but when physical or sexual abuse, neglect, or other injury shatters a child’s world, it can feel like everything is falling apart. The fear, anger, and helplessness can be overwhelming, especially when a child has been let down by the very child welfare or disability systems meant to protect them. When children have suffered in foster care or state disability systems, endured abuse in an institutional setting, or been harmed due to other governmental or privatized system failures, they have rights and claims, and their guardians or next friends do not have to face this battle alone.
Many of the children we represent are clients of attorneys or guardians ad litem in foster care or dependency cases. While those legal relationships often end when
children turn 18, the harms they have suffered in the system do not, and they will need the funds they recover from these personal injury claims to help provide care and treatment they deserve for the rest of their lives. Children who have been physically and sexually abused while in the care of child protection systems have needs that will continue well beyond the age of majority and they deserve protection.
Justice for Kids® was co-founded by Howard Talenfeld, Stacie Schmerling and Justin Grosz, who are some of the nation’s preeminent children’s rights attorneys.
Howard Talenfeld one of our nation’s most respected children’s rights lawyers, was recognized on Forbes’ inaugural list of America’s Top 200 Lawyers, received the American Association for Justice’s Trial Lawyers Care Award and was the recipient of the Florida Bar Foundation’s Medal of Honor Award for a Lawyer. Howard has been the force behind child welfare class actions, cutting edge civil rights damage claims and many multi-million-dollar settlements and verdicts on behalf of injured foster children.
Stacie Schmerling is a veteran child abuse case worker and investigator who spent 10 years working in the child welfare systems in New Jersey and Florida, before going to law school. As a lawyer and child advocate, she has handled some of the most significant child-welfare system personal injury damages cases in the country over the last 17 years.
Justin D. Grosz is a 30-year veteran trial lawyer and former Assistant State Attorney with more than 240 jury trials. He has tried cases involving all aspects of systemic
failure in child welfare cases and focuses his practice on child safety, catastrophic injury, wrongful death, and civil rights.
Together, for almost three decades, our lawyers, paralegals, support staff and investigators have secured hundreds of millions of dollars in verdicts, settlements and services for abused and injured children. We have prevailed in individual federal civil rights and negligence claims on behalf of children abused, disabled and injured while under the care of state agencies and their contracted care providers in all settings, including foster homes, group homes, emergency shelters, residential treatment centers, and at home with their parents. We are also experienced in federal civil rights class action claims and have secured legislation and other systemic changes where reshaping foster care systems of care.
The attorneys at Justice for Kids have a long legacy of child advocacy, public service and pro bono involvement serving statewide and national foster care advocacy groups, passing state and federal laws and obtaining important judicial precedent protecting the lives of thousands of children. Our insight, experience and impassioned pursuit of personal injury damages claims help ensure that our clients’ rights and futures are protected. At Justice for Kids, our singular mission is to protect the rights of our country’s most vulnerable children.