Brett R. Leitner, Esq.

Long before the pandemic put nursing homes in the spotlight, Brett was representing families after preventable falls, unsafe transfers, understaffing, abuse, and efforts to hide what happened to vulnerable residents. Reporters turn to him when a nursing home is in the news.

When surveillance video captured the mistreatment of a resident with dementia at a Long Island assisted living facility, his first questions went past the footage: Had it happened before? Where had the employee worked? Were other residents at risk?

When New York gave health care facilities extraordinary immunity during the pandemic, Brett was among the attorneys at the forefront of the fight to hold nursing homes accountable, arguing that many of the failures came before the immunity took effect.

He carried that fight to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit alongside Public Citizen Litigation Group. The court agreed that families’ negligence claims belong in New York’s state courts.

Brett began his career at AmLaw 100 and AmLaw 200 firms defending hospitals, health systems and corporations. He saw from the inside which records get produced, which quietly don’t, and which arguments are made only to buy time.

He treats every case as an investigation and prepares it from the first day as if a jury will decide it. In a recent Suffolk County case, a nursing home that failed to produce, or destroyed, its CNA rounding records and nurse-assignment sheets was sanctioned with a preclusion order.

J.D., Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law (2000); admitted in New York (2001). He practices in the New York State courts and the Eastern and Southern Districts of New York, at trial and on appeal, and has been selected to New York Metro Super Lawyers every year since 2016. The firm has recovered more than $250 million for clients.*

His work has been featured in The New York Times, NBC News and the TODAY show, ABC7 Eyewitness News, Newsweek, the New York Post, Newsday, the New York Daily News and Law360.