Biography
Roosevelt Allen III joins the Dinizulu Law Group, Ltd. as the Senior Trial Managing Counsel with a passion for helping his clients. Roosevelt has successfully overcome the odds throughout his career in order to pursue his dream of practicing law. He dropped out of high school at age 17 to join the United States Navy where he could gain the funds he needed to attend college. After service in the Navy during the Persian Gulf War, he completed his service time with an Honorable Discharge, gained further experience as a trooper in the Delaware State Police, and attended Howard University and Delaware State University, where he graduated with a degree in History and a minor in Spanish. Roosevelt then went on to earn his law degree from the University of Wisconsin Law School in 2001. While at Wisconsin, he was honored for his outstanding work in the Legal Defense Program representing indigent clients in criminal cases. It was there he had his first jury trials resulting in acquittals of his clients.
He began his legal career in New York City where he also taught as an adjunct professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. After New York City, he ventured to Washington D.C. where he worked for the Office of General Counsel. He then opened his own law firm in Milwaukee, Wisconsin where his practice focused on criminal and civil litigation.
In 2008, Roosevelt expanded his firm opening an office in Chicago where he concentrated on personal injury, wrongful death, medical malpractice and police brutality cases. In 2009, he joined a larger firm dealing with plaintiff’s civil litigation. During those years he continued his trial litigation resulting in multi-million dollar verdicts for his clients.
In 2016, he joined a civil litigation defense firm specializing in defending insurers and self-insureds in matters of catastrophic loss, professional liability, products and construction law, trucking and transportation.
After a brief stint on the insurance defense side, he rejoined the plaintiff’s bar representing plaintiff’s that have been injured due to the negligence of others violating the safety rules. In addition, to fighting for the rights of plaintiffs in catastrophic loss and wrongful death, professional liability, medical malpractice, nursing home abuse, products liability, construction law, sexual abuse, trucking and transportation crashes. Roosevelt has dedicated a significant part of his 20 plus litigation experience to fighting for the rights of wards of the state in the Department of Child Family Services (DCFS), the agencies they retain to monitor foster children and foster parents.
Many children are placed under the foster care system in private homes to rescue them from abuse or neglect in their biological homes. These highly vulnerable children need to be safe, protected and provided with the proper services to thrive. They are often vulnerable to abuse and neglect, and it is the responsibility of private agencies, group homes, foster parents and child services to protect these kids from further abuse.
Roosevelt has spent several years holding professionals like child welfare agencies, DCFS and private agencies contracted by DCFS all over the country responsible for failing to protect our kids while in foster care or placed in homes where they have endured further abuse and neglect.
These failures by these agencies can range from inadequate screening of foster care families, inadequate monitoring of children placed in a foster care system, moving children too frequently from one family to another, poor training of staff, all of which can result in serious physical or psychological abuse of a child or death.
This area is a niche area of the law that Roosevelt has a passion for and a proven record of getting results which include the following:
- 6-million-dollar settlement involving a private agency contracted by Illinois Department of Child Welfare to provide services to a 5-year-old little girl who was living in deplorable conditions, went missing and found dead from asphyxiation under the sofa in her home. The agency had been providing services to this little girl for months but failed to ensure she was safe in the home.
- 3-million-dollar settlement where Roosevelt held the Ohio Department of Children and Families responsible for the death of a 5 year old little girl who was tortured for seven months and brutally beaten by her biological mother and paramour when they consistently kept interviewing the child in front of her abusers and failed to remove the child from the home after open and obvious signs of physical abuse she was suffering at the hands of her caregivers.
- 36-million-dollar settlement from a private agency case worker providing services to a 5 year old medically fragile little boy who was responsible for ensuring he received the proper food and nutrition and who starved to death in the home as a result of the case worker purchasing the mother’s EBT card provided by the government to ensure the child get the proper food and nutrition he needed. The 5-year-old was found buried in the backyard of his mother’s home.
Roosevelt is not just another attorney who claims to have the background and experience necessary to hold these agencies accountable. A former state trooper and a former investigator for the Office of General Counsel directly investigating child abuse and neglect cases, he provides an experience to his clients that is unmatched by most attorneys. Instead of hiring investigators Roosevelt takes a direct approach to every case from investigation to litigation to ensure kids and their families get the justice they so rightfully deserve. He obtains more than just a settlement or jury award for his clients. He obtains closure for the families whose children’s lives are often devalued, by holding these agencies accountable.
Roosevelt is admitted to practice law before both federal and state courts in Illinois, New York and Wisconsin. He has extensive trial experience representing both plaintiffs and defendants and is committed to achieving the best possible results for his clients.
