The Civil Rights Division of the Florida Attorney General’s Office recently invited a representative of the Florida civil legal aid delivery system to the Capitol to accept an honor on behalf of the entire system concerning our fair housing advocacy. Kris Knab, Executive Director of Legal Services of North Florida, was presented by the Attorney General, Governor, and other members of the Florida Cabinet with a resolution that recognizes the our collective work in fighting housing discrimination and predatory lending practices. Ms. Knab thanked the AG and others on behalf of the delivery system. Pics after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »
Miriam Harmatz was the lead counsel in a complex class action on behalf of Florida Medicaid recipients in which she ultimately prevailed against ACHA. Boiling the case down to its main holding, the result of the litigation is that patients in the Medicaid system will be able to continue to access the drug Neurontin. As ancillary relief, Miriam, along with co-counsel Jane Perkins, Neil Kodsi, Shawn Boehringer, and Jennifer Wimberly, secured a fee award from Florida ACHA in the amount of $288,336.
For much more background and to read the details, check out the Order on Plaintiff’s Motion for Attorneys’ Fees and Litigation Expenses, here in PDF.
On April 8, the Chief Financial Officer of Florida, Alex Sink, held a news conference in which she praised the Florida Attorneys Saving Homes project and took mortgage lenders and servicers to task. Flanked by Kent Spuhler, Alice Vickers, and Jennifer Newton of Florida Legal Services, the CFO expressed frustration felt by homeowners and volunteer attorneys in working with lenders to modify terms.
Jennifer Newton, Alex Sink, Alice Vickers, Kent Spuhler
Here’s an article from the The News-Press covering the presser:
TALLAHASSEE - Florida families facing foreclosure run into a frustrating maze when they try to work out emergency arrangements with their lenders, Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink said Wednesday.
Backed by lawyers from Florida Legal Services Inc., she announced plans for an April 20 meeting in Tampa to bring banking executives together with lawyers who give free legal advice to the poor.
Since the economy crashed last year, with housing always ranking as the state’s chief economic challenge, Sink said tens of thousands of families have faced foreclosure. She said many of them heed the advice of the banking and mortgage industry, to contact their lenders at the earliest sign of trouble, but that homeowners often get no answers - or can’t even find out whom they need to contact.
“We’ve been hearing a sense of frustration from our lawyer partners,” Sink said. “They were getting wrapped up in the runaround.”
There were more than 46,000 Florida foreclosure filings in Florida, ranking the state second in the nation.
She said the Florida Bar and Legal Services have created a volunteer program, involving about 1,000 attorneys, to help people facing foreclosure who can’t afford to hire a lawyer. Jennifer Newton, an attorney in the “Florida Lawyers Saving Homes” program, said about 25,000 calls have been received since last June.
Newton said to qualify a property must be a homestead and the owner must be unable to hire private counsel - and must not have already been served with a foreclosure order.
Sink said she will convene the Tampa meeting with “a dozen or so of the largest lenders” in the state, to work out a method for volunteer lawyers to cut through the bureaucracy and get answers for homeowners.
Four years ago, Michelle Trunkett and Jeffrey Hearne became the co-chairs of the Housing Umbrella Group. I’ve mentioned many times that the HUG group has been the most active of our statewide umbrella groups and an example of what all of this technology, when combined with commitment, makes possible. I received word earlier this year through Jeff that Michelle would be stepping down as co-chair.
Michelle Trunkett
From Jeffrey Hearne:
Those of you who were at the February meeting know that Michelle Trunkett has
resigned from being the HUG co-chair. Without any knowledge of what we were
doing, Michelle and I became the co-chairs of HUG way back in 2005. Over
these years, Michelle has volunteered time she didn’t really have to make sure
that the umbrella group had our monthly conference calls and annual trainings.
We all owe her a huge thank you for her service over the past four years.
Amidst the sad news (for HUG) that Michelle is stepping down, there is a silver lining. Deborah Rivera from Three Rivers has stepped up and agreed to co-chair the group with Jeff. We love a happy ending! Good luck in all your endeavors, Michelle, and thank you for all you’ve done to advance the cause of justice.
By: Jeffrey Hearne, LSGMI
In August 2007, the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development announced it would take control of the Miami Dade Housing Agency (MDHA) because of financial and operational mismanagement. After HUD’s takeover, MDHA’s Section 8 voucher program became completely dysfunctional — tenants’ housing assistance was terminated before MDHA held termination hearings, tenants could not timely obtain paperwork required to move with the housing assistance, the Section 8 office was closed without notice, and tenants were being terminated from the program without fair hearings. MDHA’s failures created financial and emotional turmoil for many Section 8 participants, and in the worst cases, resulted in homelessness.
Despite numerous demands by attorneys from Legal Services of Greater Miami, MDHA and the HUD Oversight Administrator failed to take action to correct these significant problems. In July 2008, LSGMI and Florida Legal Services filed a lawsuit in federal court on behalf of three single mothers who were improperly terminated from the Section 8 voucher program. The lawsuit asked the Court to order MDHA to restore the women’s rental assistance and to order MDHA to make permanent changes to the operation of the Section 8 program. The lawsuit also sought to recover money for the clients’ economic and emotional damages.
Immediately after the lawsuit was filed, MDHA agreed to restore the clients’ rental assistance. After an early mediation, the parties reached a settlement which included $60,000 for our clients. The settlement also included several systemic changes to the program’s operation. These changes include specific timeframes for MDHA to process the paperwork which allows participants to move, specific timeframes for MDHA to approve new housing, and administrative safeguards to ensure that the housing subsidy will not be terminated without due process. The county also agreed that this settlement will apply to the private company it recently hired to operate the Section 8 program. This settlement will ensure that Section 8 participants in Miami Dade County will no longer have to worry about whether their housing assistance will stop without notice and they can be confident they will continue to benefit from this valuable government housing program. This case was handled by LSGMI Senior Attorney Jeffrey Hearne and Charles Elsesser from Florida Legal Services.
We offer our sincere congratulations to Mary Anne on being selected as the 2009 William Trickel, Jr. Professionalism Award Recipient by her peers in the Orange County Bar.
This, from the Orange County Bar Associaton:
Mary Anne Curtis De Petrillo was born January 11, 1952 in Jacksonville, Florida. The eldest of six children born to a career U.S. Marine, she grew up living primarily in Southern California, the Eastern Carolinas, and Florida where her father was stationed. Before going to college, she attended nine different schools, including three high schools. Her parents wanted her schooled by Jesuit priests and so the decision was made that she attend a Jesuit college in Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama. There she spent four happy years, graduating Magna Cum Laude with a B.S. in Political Science in 1974. When it was time for law school, Loyola University in New Orleans became the Jesuit school of choice. She graduated from Loyola with a J.D. degree in 1977.
Mary Anne remembers very clearly the day she decided to become an attorney. It was the day President Kennedy was assassinated. She still remembers the gripping, momentary fear that the country would fall into violence and chaos. Yet, the knowledge of our system of government came back to her as a quiet comfort. She knew from her studies that the defenders of our form of government, those who would protect the Constitution, and especially the Bill of Rights, were members of the legal profession. She became determined on that day to become one of them. The turmoil of the 1960s only reinforced her desire to serve the country through the legal profession.
After law school, Mary Anne took a position as a legal aid lawyer for two years until the program ran out of money. She was offered a position at an AV rated firm in the same community, where later she became a partner and a very active pro bono attorney. At age thirty two, she realized she wanted to go back to practicing poverty law full time; she answered an advertisement for a Litigation Director at the Legal Aid Society of the Orange County Bar Association and began in March 1984. Mary Anne became Executive Director in 1985 and was charged with ensuring that the four-attorney organization became the best public interest law firm possible with a strong pro bono component. Since that time, the firm has grown to 18 attorneys and 24 support staff, with more than 900 attorney-volunteers providing quality legal services to literally thousands of low income clients and abused and neglected dependent children annually.
Mary Anne has been an active volunteer throughout her career in local and statewide bar association, non- profits, and other groups. She currently serves on the Florida Legal Services Board of Directors and the Community Leadership Council of the Howard Phillips Center for Children and Families. She has been married since 1978 to John De Petrillo, an artist and the Exhibit Coordinator for the Orange County History Center. They have one child, David, who resides with his wife, Kelly, and daughter, Skyler, in Amherst, New Hampshire.
Sometimes we get examples of particularly effective advocacy and like to pass the same along to spotlight the good work being done. This time, we have a docket of successes from Delores Gilmore, an advocate at the Legal Aid Service of Broward County.
Client had a 9 month old child and was working at Target and she was homeless. She had been receiving a welfare check but left the system for a job. This means that she could access certain support dollars that had been allocated for people such as her to ensure that they were able to retain their job. The client applied for assistance with housing and needed help with her security deposit. She was turned away flat and denied. After review of her case I found out that she was still receiving about $80 in welfare money each month due to her low pay. There is a provision in TANF that allows for a “cash severance” of $1,000 if the client stops her $80 welfare check and promises not to request welfare for in the least 3 months. After some time I was able to assist this client with support service assistance from WorkForce One in the amount of $800 and with WorkForce One and Department of Children Families to ensure that she received the cash severance benefit of $1,000. All the while the client was working, looking for a place to live and dealing with her homelessness. Now she has secured a place to live and continues to work. She has promised to go back to WorkForce One for assistance with training as soon as she gets things settled. More after the break!
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The Public Interest Law Section
presents
“Sealing and Expungement of Criminal Records”
Presenter: Jorge Tormes, Americorps Attorney at Three Rivers Legal Services and Tamara Gray, Miami Public Defender’s Office
Telephonic CLE
Thursday – March 26, 2009
12:10 p.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Introduction to Sealing and Expungement: What it does and does not do for your clients; When disclosure is required even if records have been sealed or expunged; Qualifying for Sealing and Expungement; Procedures for Applying; Special Issues Related to Juveniles.
Telephone Conferencing
(Call-in information will be sent BY EMAIL to registrants prior to the seminar.)
CLE Credit:
1.0 hour General
1.0 hour Ethics
Download the attached registration form in PDF format.
From the next issue of the Florida Bar News…
Administrative Law Section works to help disabled adults and children
The state is in such dire straits right now that those lawyers blessed with the gift of a little spare time are apt to find long lists of people needing help. A new measure by The Florida Bar’s Administrative Law Section and Florida Legal Services is aimed at helping Florida’s disabled adults and children rise to the top of that list. And they’ve made it quick, free, and relatively easy for lawyers to get up to speed in time to roll up their sleeves and pitch in….
The section held training for both groups in November and December in Tallahassee to educate future volunteers, but those who missed it shouldn’t worry: all the documentation for both trainings, as well as video, are available both at floridaprobono.org and the Administrative Section’s Web site, www.flaadminlaw.org.
Sheila Meehan of Florida Legal Services coordinates the program, which is just getting off the ground now and very actively seeking volunteers. Meehan credits McArthur and former administrative law section chair Andy Bertron with being the first to sign up. The two are awaiting their first cases.
“These are the people who are least able to help themselves — they are in financial need and have been disabled before they reached adulthood — they’re in this situation through no fault of their own,” Bertron said. “I can’t think of a more deserving class of people for us to help.”
There’s much more at the source.
The LEGAL AID SOCIETY OF THE ORANGE COUNTY BAR ASSOCIATION, INC. has announced its training series for volunteer attorneys through May 19. For OCBA members, the training is free. For non-OCBA members participating in the LAS pro bono program, the training is free. Pre-registration is required for the free lunch and requested for training (or subject to space availability if not pre-registered). For more information, please emailctucker@legalaidocba.org or mcarbo@legalaidocba.org or merazmus@legalaidocba.org. Read the rest of this entry »