Therapist Heidi Kling Lawsuit: Pollack’s Claims and 2024 Ruling

The Heidi Kling therapist lawsuit is a civil case in Manhattan in which former patient Michael Pollack accuses the New York psychologist of carrying on a sexual relationship with him for roughly ten years while he was in her care, and accuses her clinical supervisor, Joseph Newirth, of knowing about it and encouraging it. Pollack filed the suit in February 2023 in New York County Supreme Court, and in November 2024 a judge allowed most of his claims to proceed. As of mid-2026, the case is still open.¹²

Who Is Involved

Michael Pollack is a former hedge fund manager who survived the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks and later became a professor at NYU Stern. He began therapy after the attacks to treat PTSD and related symptoms.³

Heidi Kling is a licensed clinical psychologist in New York with a PhD from Adelphi University’s Derner Institute. She practices psychodynamic psychotherapy out of a Manhattan office and specializes in trauma, PTSD, anxiety, and depression.⁴

Joseph Newirth is a Professor Emeritus at Adelphi’s Derner School of Psychology and a former director of its postdoctoral program in psychoanalysis. He was Kling’s clinical supervisor and, starting in 2011, Pollack’s second therapist.¹

What Pollack Alleges

Pollack says he began seeing Kling professionally in 2008. According to the complaint, the sexual relationship began during a 2011 session and continued at “every, single session thereafter” for about ten years, until he ended it in August 2021.⁵

Beyond her $300 session fee, Pollack alleges, Kling demanded separate cash payments she called “mistress money,” totaling roughly $250,000 over the decade. He says he withdrew the cash from an ATM near her office and that the payments sometimes reached “thousands per week.” He estimates he paid another $50,000 for the three years of therapy before the sexual contact began.⁵

Pollack describes what happened not as an affair but as “gravely mishandled transference” and abuse. He alleges Kling disparaged his wife, cultivated his dependence, and sometimes leaned on him for emotional support inside sessions before sexual contact.²⁵

The allegations against Newirth are that he knew about the relationship and endorsed it in his own sessions with Pollack. The complaint quotes Newirth telling Pollack that the relationship “was helping him turn his childhood trauma and the terrorist attack into positives in his life,” and, when Pollack tried to end it, berating him: “You were a f—ing robot before you met her. She opened you up, gave you life.”¹⁶

How Kling Is Defending the Case

Kling does not deny that a sexual relationship occurred. Her defense is that she terminated the therapeutic relationship before the sexual involvement began, making the encounters an extramarital affair between consenting adults rather than therapist-patient misconduct.² If that framing holds, the professional-conduct rules that prohibit sexual contact between a psychologist and a client may not attach in the same way.

Pollack disputes it. He argues that the meetings continued to take place in Kling’s consulting room and that she continued to accept payment, both of which he says are consistent with an ongoing clinical relationship.⁷

The Claims and the November 2024 Ruling

The case is captioned Pollack v. Kling, Index No. 151934/2023, in New York County Supreme Court. Pollack is represented by attorney Audrey Bedolis. Defendants include Kling, Newirth, Newirth’s professional corporation, and an unidentified entity listed as “Jane Doe, P.C.”¹²

The complaint raises five causes of action: professional malpractice, lack of informed consent, negligent infliction of emotional distress, breach of fiduciary duty, and violation of New York Education Law § 6509(9).

On November 15, 2024, Justice Dakota D. Ramseur ruled on Newirth’s motion to dismiss. The judge granted it in part and denied it in part. The breach of fiduciary duty claim was dismissed as duplicative of the malpractice claim. The rest of the claims survived.¹

Three parts of the decision are worth understanding:

New York Civil Rights Law § 80-a generally bars lawsuits based on extramarital affairs. Newirth argued it barred Pollack’s claims here. The court disagreed, citing the 2012 appellate case Dupree v. Giugliano, which recognized a therapist-patient exception. The court extended the reasoning: if a therapist who sleeps with a patient can be sued for malpractice, a second therapist who encourages that conduct can be too.¹
The court held that informed-consent claims under New York’s Public Health Law are not restricted to medical, dental, or podiatric malpractice, and can reach psychological treatment.¹
The court ruled that Education Law § 6509(9), read together with the state regulation defining “immoral conduct” in psychology to include “any physical contact of a sexual nature between psychologist and client,” can support a per se malpractice claim.¹⁸

The judge also denied Pollack’s cross-motion for sanctions and ordered Newirth to file an answer to the amended complaint within twenty days. A preliminary conference was scheduled for January 7, 2025.¹

Why the Therapist-Patient Line Matters Here

The ruling matters because New York regulates sexual contact between psychologists and clients as professional misconduct, not as a private matter between adults. The regulation at 8 NYCRR 29.12 defines “any physical contact of a sexual nature between psychologist and client” as immoral conduct and a ground for discipline.⁸ Professional bodies take a similar line: the American Psychiatric Association’s absolute prohibition on sexual relationships with current or former patients rests on the view that the power imbalance in the clinical relationship persists after treatment ends, making genuine consent impossible.⁹ That is why Kling’s defense turns almost entirely on whether therapy had already ended before the sexual contact began.

Where the Case Stands

As of mid-2026, the case remains active, and reporting describes it as having “inched along” since it was filed. No trial date, settlement, or final resolution has been publicly reported.²

One boundary worth flagging: this is a civil lawsuit, not a licensing action or criminal case. As of the most recent state records available in the reporting, no professional misconduct cases were on file against either Kling or Newirth with New York’s Department of Education, and no disciplinary action has been publicly reported in connection with these allegations.⁵

1
NY Courts. Pollack v Kling, 2024 NY Slip Op 34145(U)
2
Granta. Transference in the Afternoon
3
New York Post. Mumbai Terror Attack Survivor: I’m Thankful Each and Every Day
4
Psychology Today. Heidi Kling, New York, NY
5
New York Post. NYC Shrink Had Sex With Patient for 10 Years: Lawsuit
6
Daily Mail. Married Hedge Fund Manager Sues NYC Therapist Turned Lover
7
Longreads. Pollack Kling Affair Therapy Transference
8
Cornell Law Institute. 8 NYCRR 29.12 – Psychology
9
PubMed. Sexual Misconduct in the Therapist-Patient Relationship