Emma Freudenberger
Since joining NSB in 2008, Emma Freudenberger has won substantial verdicts and settlements on behalf of civil rights plaintiffs in jurisdictions around the country. In 2011, with Nick Brustin and Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady, Ms. Freudenberger secured the first ever jury award in New Jersey for Section 1983 loss of life damages on behalf of the estate and children of Emil Mann, Sr., a Native American man fatally shot by State Parks Police. In 2010, with Barry Scheck and Nick Brustin, Ms. Freudenberger secured the largest individual settlement in New York City history on behalf of Barry Gibbs, a former Brooklyn postal worker wrongfully convicted of murder because of individual and systemic misconduct at the NYPD. In 2009, with Barry Scheck and co-counsel Susman Godfrey LLP, Ms. Freudenberger successfully litigated and won a multi-million dollar judgment in federal court against the City of Houston on behalf of George Rodriguez, whose wrongful conviction for rape and subsequent seventeen years imprisonment were caused by gross supervisory failures and systemic misconduct at the now-notorious Houston Police Department Crime Lab. Also in 2009, with Nick Brustin and co-counsel Glenn A. Garber, P.C., Ms. Freudenberger won one of the highest damages awards ever secured under New York State’s Unjust Conviction Act on behalf of Hector Gonzalez, who spent nearly six years in prison for murder before an investigation by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York established his innocence and identified the true perpetrator. Ms. Freudenberger has experience managing every stage of complex constitutional litigation from the pleadings phase through trial, including taking depositions, all aspects of discovery and motion practice, and comprehensive mediations and settlement negotiations.
Prior to joining NSB, Ms. Freudenberger served as the death penalty clerk for the Supreme Court of New Jersey. In 2007, she graduated from Columbia Law School, where she was a Harlan Fiske Stone scholar, a Charles Evans Hughes fellow, and recipient of the Valentin J.T. Wertheimer Prize and the New York State Bar Association’s 2007 Law Student Legal Ethics Award. She also has worked at the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem, the Immigration Law Unit of the Legal Aid Society, the Committee for the Administration of Justice in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and the Vera Institute of Justice.
Ms. Freudenberger was Editor-in-Chief of A Jailhouse Lawyer’s Manual and oversaw publication of its Seventh Edition. With Susan Sturm, Jean Howard, and Eddie Jauregui, she is a co-author of Linking Mobilization to Institutional Power: The Faculty-Led Diversity Initiative at Columbia in Doing Diversity in Higher Education, Rutgers University Press, 2008. She graduated from Wesleyan University in 2001.
Ms. Freudenberger is admitted to practice in New York, the United States District Courts for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Ms. Freudenberger can be reached at emma@nsbcivilrights.com.