Brett H. Klein

Practice areas

Civil Rights

Focus areas

Police Misconduct

Brett H. Klein is the founder of his own law firm located in New York City, where he specializes exclusively in civil rights law. With a dedicated focus spanning two decades, Mr. Klein leverages his expertise to offer legal representation to individuals and their family members who have had their rights unlawfully violated by law enforcement officers or other authorities. He has authored and delivered numerous lectures on cases related to this area of practice. Notably, in 2015, he appeared on CNN on two consecutive evenings to provide his insights on the infamous incident in which Eric Garner tragically lost his life following a chokehold applied by a member of the New York City Police Department.

Mr. Klein is recognized as a prominent figure in wrongful conviction litigation. In the current year, he achieved the exoneration of a man who had spent over 25 years incarcerated and is now actively pursuing justice for his client by seeking compensation under New York’s unjust conviction statute.

Throughout his career, Mr. Klein has successfully secured hundreds of substantial settlements and jury awards on behalf of his clients. In late 2019, he obtained an $11,000,000 jury verdict for a 27-year-old motorist who sustained a cervical spine injury, resulting in permanent neurological dysfunction and impairments after being shot by a law enforcement officer during a traffic stop. In February 2019, Mr. Klein secured a $1.8 million jury verdict against Home Depot in Brooklyn Supreme Court. In another recent case, he negotiated a $1.5 million settlement from the City of New York for a man who spent five years in custody on Rikers Island before ultimately being acquitted of all charges. Additionally, Mr. Klein reached a $1.85 million settlement with Suffolk County in a case involving the asphyxiation of an autistic man by Suffolk County police officers. He also recently settled a case on behalf of the estate of a man who was asphyxiated by NYPD officers on Staten Island for $1.5 million. Furthermore, in other recent settlements, he obtained a $1.5 million settlement for a man falsely accused of shooting at NYPD officers, resulting in 18 days of wrongful confinement, $1 million from the City of New York for a man wrongfully accused of a sex crime and detained for two days, and nearly $1 million for a client who suffered the loss of an eye after being kicked in the face by an NYPD officer.

Mr. Klein has a track record of successfully litigating and winning numerous jury trials, including favorable verdicts against entities such as the City of New York, New York State, the United States, and various municipalities, including Yonkers, Suffolk County, the Port Authority, and the MTA. Recent examples of his achievements include a federal jury verdict of $250,000 for a man who was assaulted by fellow inmates in the Suffolk County Jail due to the misconduct of correction officers, as well as a $150,000 verdict against New York City involving the false arrest of a Brooklyn man for 30 minutes and the issuance of a summons in front of his young son by an NYPD officer during a road rage incident.

Mr. Klein pursued his undergraduate education at the State University of New York at Binghamton, majoring in political science and earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1994. He subsequently attended Brooklyn Law School, where he earned his Juris Doctor in 1997. Mr. Klein holds licenses to practice law in both New York and New Jersey, and he is admitted to practice before the United States Supreme Court, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, and the U.S. District Courts for the Eastern, Southern, Northern, and Western Districts of New York, as well as in the District of New Jersey.