Brian J. Zeiger: Pennsylvania Civil Rights Attorney

Brian J. Zeiger is the founder of The Zeiger Firm, a Philadelphia-based practice that represents people who have been seriously harmed by police officers, prison officials, and the institutions that employ them. For more than two decades he has litigated civil rights cases under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 across Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and the federal courts, with a practice built around one central question: what is the true measure of the harm, and how do you prove it to a jury?

What the practice covers

The firm's civil rights work concentrates on the points where government power meets an individual with no ability to push back. Brian represents victims of police misconduct and police brutality, including shootings, beatings, taser injuries, and excessive force during arrests and stops. He handles false arrest and malicious prosecution cases for clients who were detained, charged, or jailed without probable cause, and wrongful conviction cases for people who served time for crimes they did not commit.

On the corrections side, he represents prisoners and their families in cases involving prison medical malpractice, denial of medical care, and deliberate indifference to serious medical needs by jail and prison staff, including the wrongful death of incarcerated people who were ignored until it was too late.

These cases are hard by design. Qualified immunity, Monell liability, the deliberate indifference standard, and the procedural traps of the Prison Litigation Reform Act are all built to end a case before a jury ever hears it. Brian's practice is structured to get past those barriers and, once past them, to make the case about the person who was hurt.

A damages-focused practice

The Zeiger Firm has a damages-focused practice. Brian concentrates on catastrophic injury cases: paralysis, traumatic brain injury, amputation, permanent disability, and death. The question in these cases is rarely whether something went wrong; it is what that wrong cost the person and the family living with it, and what a jury will need to see in order to award full compensation.

That focus shapes how the firm works up a case from the first day. It means early investigation and preservation of video, medical, and custody records, retaining medical and use-of-force experts before the defense has framed the narrative, and building life-care and economic evidence that reflects the full scope of a client's losses. The firm's results reflect that approach, including a $1.25 million recovery in a prisoner medical deprivation case, seven-figure settlements in police brutality and prisoner abuse matters, and a series of substantial recoveries in wrongful arrest and police misconduct cases.

Background and credentials

Brian earned his J.D. and M.B.A. from Temple University in 2000 after completing undergraduate degrees in accounting and finance at Washington University in St. Louis. That business and finance training is unusual for a trial lawyer and is directly useful in a damages practice, where valuing a lifetime of lost earnings and future medical costs is often the heart of the case.

He is licensed to practice in every state and federal court in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. He is also admitted to the United States District Court for the Western District of New York, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, and the Supreme Court of the United States. That breadth of admission allows the firm to take cases wherever the misconduct occurred rather than referring them out, and to handle a case from the complaint through appeal without a change of counsel.

Brian has been selected to Pennsylvania Super Lawyers repeatedly since 2008 and holds a 10.0 rating from Avvo. He served as Chair of the Criminal Justice Section of the Pennsylvania Bar Association from 2019 to 2021 and as a Hearing Officer for the Disciplinary Board of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania from 2019 to 2022. He is a member of the Philadelphia Bar Association, the Pennsylvania Bar Association, the Federal Bar Association, and the National Lawyers Guild.

Why the criminal defense background matters

Alongside its civil rights work, The Zeiger Firm maintains an active criminal defense and appellate practice. That is not a coincidence. Most civil rights cases begin inside a criminal case: an arrest that should never have happened, a charge brought to justify a beating, a conviction built on withheld evidence. A lawyer who has tried criminal cases and argued appeals understands how police reports are written, how prosecutors make charging decisions, and where the record of a wrongful arrest or conviction will show the constitutional violation. Brian brings that perspective to every civil rights case the firm takes.

Learn more on Brian Zeiger's MrCheckpoint attorney profile or visit brianzeiger.com.