Law Office Management
Dec. 2, 2008
The Third Annual Angel Awards
In our third pro bono awards we honor 16 attorneys throughout the state for their good works.
Paul Alexander
Howrey, East Palo Alto
Alexander was a partner in the San Francisco office of Heller Ehrman in the fall of 2006 when the ACLU of Northern California and the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights (LCCR) approached him to help stop raids on homeless encampments in Fresno. Over a two-and-a-half-year period city workers, Caltrans employees, and police had repeatedly targeted the sites, seizing and destroying the tents, blankets, clothing, and personal belongings of hundreds of homeless people. Alexander became lead attorney in a class action brought that October on behalf of more than 300 plaintiffs (Kincaid v. City of Fresno). Just two days after the case was filed, U.S. district Judge Oliver W. Wanger issued a temporary restraining order against the city, and then a preliminary injunction in December 2006. Fresno did not appeal the rulings, but settlement negotiations continued. Last summer the court approved an unprecedented $2.35 million settlement, which included $485,000 in compensation for destroyed property and $750,000 in attorneys fees, shared by the ACLU and LCCR. Alexander worked more than 1,550 hours on the case, and Heller Ehrman accepted no attorneys fees for his efforts.
George H. Brown
Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, Palo Alto
As co-counsel with the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights (LCCR) in San Francisco, Brown--at the time a partner at Heller Ehrman--devoted more than 400 hours to a legal battle that forced the city of Modesto to abandon its at-large election system in favor of one based on districts. Under Modesto's at-large voting system, only one Latino had been elected to the city council in nearly a century--even though Latinos now make up more than 25 percent of the population. Brown claimed that the system was in violation of the California Voting Rights Act, which prohibits practices that impair minority voting rights. But Modesto countered that the voting rights statute was unconstitutional on its face. The trial court threw the case out on the pleadings, but in December 2006 a state appeals court ruled against the city on the constitutional question. After both the California Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case, the city relented and proposed a district election plan, which voters approved in February 2008. The dispute was finally settled when Modesto agreed to pay $3 million in attorneys fees. Also, Brown won another big victory this past September when, in a first-of-its-kind ruling, a superior court enjoined a school district election in Madera County based again on the ethnically polarizing effects of at-large voting.
Jill N. Cartwright
Hanson Bridgett, San Francisco
Ever since Cartwright was a paralegal, she's volunteered at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights (LCCR) in San Francisco. Even after the Loma Prieta earthquake struck the city in 1989, she made her way to the office to staff its Tuesday Night Clinic. The building security guard sent her away, but for nearly two decades Cartwright--even while studying to pass the bar and later as a busy associate at Hanson Bridgett--has been a mainstay, serving clients who can't afford legal representation. She now serves as Hanson Bridgett's LCCR liaison, recruiting volunteers within her firm to handle cases at the clinic. And if she can't find someone to take on a case, she does it herself. Last year Cartwright took an unlawful detainer case just days before trial and spent 150 hours seeing it through to conclusion. "Other people would have given up," says Nira Geevargis, staff attorney at LCCR, "but not Jill." When Cartwright stepped in, the client was incarcerated in Santa Rita on criminal charges, which subjected him to an immigration hold. Cartwright got him out of jail, settled the criminal case, and saved him from eviction.
Charles L. Coleman III
Nathan Leavitt
Holland & Knight, San Francisco
Tara L. Cooper
Holland & Knight, Los Angeles
Asylum seeker R.A. had been in the custody of U.S. Im-migration Customs and Enforcement for several months when Cooper began working on his case in April 2007. The client had fled to the United States in 2000 after he was brutally beaten and abused by the civil police in El Salvador because of his sexual orientation. At his deportation hearing, R.A. had represented himself pro se before a San Francisco immigration judge, who ordered him deported. The Holland & Knight attorneys successfully appealed the decision, convincing the Board of Immigration Appeals that R.A. had been denied a fair opportunity to present his case. They obtained a new hearing for their client. "Getting a win at the BIA is rare," says Karen Tumlin, staff attorney at the National Immigration Law Center in Los Angeles. "The case was remanded to the original trial judge, who admitted that he got it wrong." Coleman took the lead on the briefing, and Leavitt assisted him at trial. In May the immigration judge issued an order allowing R.A. to stay in the United States, and after roughly 18 months in custody he was finally released. The firm also helped its client acquire a work permit, and he is now employed.
Janet S. Combs
Southern California Edison, Rosemead
Combs has been instrumental in getting Southern California Edison (SCE) attorneys to work pro bono on adoption cases through Public Counsel, and on employment claims with Bet Tzedek Legal Services. Combs began coordinating the adoption work in 2006, recruiting SCE attorneys and staff to work on cases involving children who have been abused or neglected and are in the foster care system in Los Angeles. This year SCE helped adopting parents whose primary language is Spanish; Combs paired attorneys with Spanish-speaking staff to finalize the adoptions. And as the 200809 chair of the legal department's pro bono committee, Combs asked Bet Tzedek's Employment Rights Project to conduct a one-day training session for SCE's legal department, teaching lawyers and staff how to bring employment cases before the California Labor Commissioner on an ongoing basis. In April more than 30 people from SCE's legal department attended the training. Combs assigns attorneys, support staff, and translators to Bet Tzedek's employment cases, which involve clients such as restaurant, garment, or car-wash workers who have been underpaid. SCE has settled five of its eight cases so far, winning $6,000 for a restaurant worker whose weekly pay was $270, and $10,000 for two garment workers who'd been paid roughly $100 a week.
Larry David
Sole practitioner, Pasadena
Aformer businessman, David has been a steadfast volunteer at the Los Angeles County Bar Association Domestic Violence Project since he was admitted to the bar in 2005. Once a month he staffs the project at the Los Angeles County Superior Court in both Pasadena and in downtown Los Angeles, helping people fill out paperwork to get a temporary restraining order. He frequently goes well beyond what the typical volunteer does. "Larry will come in on an extra day if I am short on volunteers," says Sara Rondon, the project's coordinator. "When he's at the courthouse on other cases, he will often stop by and ask if I need any help." In addition, David takes an average of two pro bono domestic violence cases a year. The cases often require several court appearances, and can take several months to resolve. In fact, for one he wound up spending so much time with the client that the judge awarded $17,000 in attorneys fees, which David promptly transferred to the bar association's project.
Mathew W. dos Santos
Oliver Q. Dunlap
Parisa Jorjani
James M. Schurz
Morrison & Foerster, San Francisco
Dos Santos, Jorjani, and Schurz worked with the San Francisco based National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) and Idaho sole practitioner Sheryl L. Musgrove on a precedent-setting case on behalf of a transgender prisoner in Idaho. The situation was desperate: The Idaho Department of Corrections had denied 75 requests by Jenniffer Spencer for medical evaluation and treatment for gender identity disorder, which led to Spencer's self-castration. In July 2007 the attorneys won a preliminary injunction from an Idaho federal district court that ordered the state prison system to provide Spencer with "appropriate female hormone therapy and psychotherapy to address Plaintiff's gender identity issues" pending a trial on the merits. Dos Santos and Jorjani wrote briefs and filed motions supervised by Schurz, who argued for the preliminary injunction and has been involved in settlement negotiations. NCLR and MoFo attorneys also joined forces on a second transgender prisoner case in Idaho, once again seeking proper evaluation and treatment. Dunlap was responsible for expert discovery, fact discovery, and motion work in that case. Schurz, Dunlap, and dos Santos, in conjunction with the NCLR, are working with the Idaho Department of Corrections to reform its general policy toward transgender prisoners. Altogether, these MoFo attorneys have contributed more than 4,000 hours to the cases.
Judith Z. Gold
Heller Ehrman, San Francisco
Gold was a key member of the litigation team that helped The Public Interest Law Project (PILP) in Oakland block a reduction in welfare benefits. Under the stricter eligibility requirements proposed by the Alameda County Social Services Agency earlier this year, at least 5,000 of the county's 8,500 welfare recipients stood to lose all their benefits. PILP Co-Director Stephen E. Ronfeldt contacted Gold, and within a few days they were "working late at night and on weekends, emailing each other at 3 a.m." about the case, says Ronfeldt. "She put in well over 500 hours. This is probably the best pro bono help I've had in 40 years." Indeed, Alameda County Superior Court Judge David E. Hunter struck down the county's proposed changes, and the welfare benefits were retained (Watkins v. County of Alameda). Next month Gold joins PILP as its public benefits attorney.
Byron J. Gross
Hooper Lundy & Bookman, Los Angeles
For nearly two decades, Gross has worked pro bono for the HIV and AIDS Legal Services Alliance (HALSA), pursuing health care access and federal disability-benefit appeals. He has personally represented more than 20 clients living with HIV and AIDS. Gross's work includes settling an HIV-discrimination case in which the client had been denied medical treatment, and litigating an ERISA complaint for a client whose insurance carrier had denied long-term disability benefits. He usually has at least one open pro bono case with HALSA, spending 10 to 50 hours on each. When a HALSA client had his Supplemental Security Income payments and Medi-Cal coverage suspended last year without explanation--and then was charged $16,500 for an overpayment--Gross took the case and discovered that the Social Security Administration had erred. After several months of advocacy, the SSA waived the $16,500 overcharge. Gross also got the client's health care benefits reinstated.
Michelene E. Insalaco
Sucherman-Insalaco, San Francisco
Insalaco took on an appellate issue for Kimberly E. Lynch, a family law attorney in Morgan Hill, in a pending case on behalf of her client, a woman litigating a child-custody dispute with the child's biological father. The mother did not want the father to be granted visitation rights, on the ground that the four-year-old boy had allegedly been conceived as a result of the father raping her. "A few days after I asked her, Michelene agreed to work pro bono on the case," says Lynch. Her client, a Jehovah's Witness, alleged that in meetings with church elders the biological father had admitted that he raped her. The trial court ruled that clergy-penitent privilege would apply, thus barring discovery of the crucial evidence. Undaunted, Insalaco won an extraordinary writ from the Sixth Appellate District, which found that the clergy-penitent privilege did not apply to any communications made by the client or her alleged rapist in meetings with Jehovah's Witness elders when third parties were present. "Now we can depose the elders, and they must testify to those conversations," says Lynch. Insalaco also is a mainstay of the Family Law Project of the San Francisco Bar Association's Volunteer Legal Services Program, having handled more than 30 pro bono cases since 1992.
Richard R. Wiebe
Sole practitioner, San Francisco
Wiebe's pro bono work for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Center for Biological Diversity takes up easily more than half his practice. Since 2001 he has worked on EFF cases dealing with free speech, privacy, and electronic voting machines. More recently, he played a critical role in EFF's suit against AT&T regarding the corporation's role in the National Security Agency's warrantless spying on Internet and telephone communications. Wiebe is the primary author and key strategist of the 50-page brief the EFF will present to the court this month, arguing that a law giving retroactive immunity to carriers in the government's surveillance program, signed by President Bush in July, is unconstitutional. "We could not do this case without Rick," says Cindy A. Cohn, legal director of the EFF, which fights for citizen's online rights. "He took the lead on the separation of powers and due process arguments. This motion will determine whether AT&T and the other phone carriers are going to be held accountable for violating their customers' trust and privacy." Wiebe has also provided advice over the past seven years to the Center for Biological Diversity on a variety of ongoing environmental cases. He represented the center and one of its members in litigation against an Altamont wind farm, handling the briefing, the trial, and the appeal.
Usman Baporia
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