Florida Civil Legal UPDATE

Justice Anstead has long been an advocate of legal services to the poor.  He spoke recently on the subject in the Third Circuit.  Coverage is from the Lake City Reporter.

Recently retired Florida Supreme Court Justice Harry Lee Anstead told a room full of lawyers and judges Thursday night that attorneys who give free legal service save the profession from complete hypocrisy.

“Justice is the guardian of liberty,” according to some of the words carved on the U.S. Supreme Court Building.

“Equal justice under law” is a phrase also etched in stone in the nation’s capital and is what Anstead referred to as he spoke at the Third Annual Private Bar Involvement Reception, sponsored by Three Rivers Legal Services and held at Quail Heights Country Club.

The gathering was to honor at least 35 attorneys in the Third Judicial Circuit who donated their service pro bono — without cost. Three Rivers Legal Services was established in 1977 and provides pro bono service in 17 North Florida counties to low-income, elderly or otherwise disadvantaged clients.

… Among the actions at the event, beyond certificates being awarded to many attorneys, was the presentation of a plaque to Three Rivers Legal Services Director Allison P. Thompson, who like Anstead, has had a distinguished career by being committed to justice and equality.

When I worked at JALA, the Consumer Unit was beginning to assemble a truly innovative project to get lawyers involved in educating high school students about the responsible use of credit.  That project is ready to launch next month.  Check out the whole article in the Daily Record.  I’m certain this will be a model program, begging to be replicated in many, many places.

“It is rather difficult for young people to realize what the consequences of overspending can be,” said Duval County Judge Roberto Arias, who is a certified instructor with the program. “For example, what happens a lot of times if you don’t pay one credit card on time then all your other credit cards usually have provisions in their contracts that allow them to increase their interest rates to the maximum amount after they find out you missed a payment on another card.”

Arias decided to get involved with the program because he is a father of high school-aged kids and he saw the credit offers start to come in the mail for his kids. And, many of the cases that are coming into his courtroom involve people who don’t understand credit.

The Daily Record had a very nice profile of long-time JALA staffer Sarah Fowler on Tuesday.  For many years, JALA was the prinicpal sponsor of Jacksonville’a annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. celebration.  Sarah was the chair of this year’s event, which is the focus of this really nice piece.

The event has been held at Metropolitan Park the last five years, following many years at the Jacksonville Landing and is a fun time for patrons following the annual parade — fun for everyone except one of the key people who helps make it a reality each year.

But, the work is well worth it to Sarah Fowler of Jacksonville Area Legal Aid.

“I’ll have fun when it’s over,” said a smiling Fowler, chair of the Martin Luther King Jr. celebration committee. “There’s a lot of work that goes into it and I’m always running around during it.”

The event isn’t the only thing that occupies Fowler’s time — she’s also the director of The Public Service Project, a pro bono program of the Fourth Judicial Circuit, at JALA. The program provides attorneys with the opportunity to assist low-income people in need of legal service.

The link between JALA and the annual event is stronger than just Fowler, as the organization sponsored the event for its first 14 years, beginning in 1989. The past five have been sponsored by the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Foundation.

From The Florida Bar:

Russell E. Carlisle of Fort Lauderdale has been selected as the recipient of the 2009 Tobias Simon Pro Bono Service Award. The award will be presented by Chief Justice Peggy A. Quince at a Jan. 29 ceremony at the Florida Supreme Court in Tallahassee.

Russell E. Carlisle

Read the rest of this entry »

Huge atta-boys to the Florida Justice Institute, Florida Institutional Legal Services, and pro bono counsel at Holland + Knight today as they have secured a very favorable decision from the Middle District of Florida.  From the Daily Business Review (registration required):

Now a federal judge has ruled that the use of chemical agents against McKinney and another severely mentally ill inmate constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.

Advocates for mentally ill inmates hope the 75-page order by U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Corrigan will open up a dialogue with the state Department of Corrections to prevent the gassing of prisoners who are too ill to respond to negative reinforcement.

This decision is very significant because it’s the first time a federal court in Florida has held that use of chemical agents, including pepper spray, on mentally ill inmates locked in their cells who are doing no harm to themselves or others violates the cruel and unusual punishment clause of the 8th and 14th amendments,” said Randy Berg, executive director of the Florida Justice Institute in Miami, who represented inmates in the case.

Leon Fresco, a Holland & Knight associate in Miami who worked on the case pro bono, said, “This is a decision that is going to have broad national impact. This is really ground-breaking.”

Also of note:

“We have been asking all along for intervention prior to the use of chemical agents,” Berg said. “See if the inmate understands what he is doing is wrong and if the application of chemical agents would serve any purpose.”

The Florida Justice Institute and the legal aid group Florida Institutional Legal Services in Gainesville spearheaded the lawsuit on behalf of 10 inmates. Four were dismissed from the litigation after being released, and the judge ruled against four others, finding prison officers did not have sufficient information about their mental illness before using chemical restraints.

There’s a lot more detail in the article.  I’m sure we’ll be linking to other media outlets as they report the decision.  If you’d like to dig into the ruling yourself, have at it.

Many programs have begun aggressive advocacy on behalf of developmentally disabled Floridians who have been placed in new coverage “tiers” and denied their right to a fair hearing.  The Health & Senior Law Umbrella Group has been involved in this work; we’ve also launched a statewide pro bono effort to provide training in these matters.

This, tonight, from the Advocacy Center:

A lawsuit has been filed by the Advocacy Center for Persons with Disabilities, Inc. (Advocacy Center) in the Circuit Court in and for the 2nd Judicial Circuit in Tallahassee, Florida against the Agency for Persons with Disabilities (APD). The lawsuit is titled Lyons v. Agency for Persons with Disabilities, Case No. 2009-CA 0144 and has been assigned to Judge John C. Cooper.

Plaintiffs are William Layton Lyons, Francesca Correa, John Bodack and the Advocacy Center. The Advocacy Center is a non-profit corporation authorized by federal law to pursue legal, administrative, and other remedies for individuals with disabilities in Florida. APD is the state agency charged with the administration of home and community based waiver services for individuals with developmental disabilities.

The lawsuit alleges that cuts to the funding levels for home and community based services for individuals with developmental disabilities will cause Plaintiffs and thousands of others to experience immediate irreparable harm. The lawsuit also alleges that Plaintiffs and thousands of others have been denied their right to a hearing in violation of chapter 120 of the Florida Statutes.

3,600 individuals who have had their home and community-based Medicare waiver services reduced by the Department, and who have requested a fair hearing on the merits of their individual cases, have had their hearing requests denied en masse.  At least that’s my take.  Form your own by reading the full release, which also links to the pleading filed by the Advocacy Center.

We love Kelly Carmody.  We really, really love Kelly Carmody.  She has a way of getting people to talk.  And then she has a way of getting them to listen.

This time, she has the rapt attention of the organized Bar.  This article in The Florida Bar News should be required reading for every member.

“We had strong indications of some severe drops in pro bono activity in terms of number of hours and number of cases — the statistics were a little spotty, but it was pretty evident,” says Paul Doyle, who directs the Foundation’s Legal Services for the Poor grant funding program. “There was a growing concern that we were not paying enough attention to the pro bono delivery system — that we were failing to keep it vibrant and alive — just by what I would call benign neglect.”

The Florida Bar received national recognition for its pro bono program in the early ’90s and pro bono contributions increased. But it’s gone downhill since 2001. Since then, the report states, “Case-by-case attempts to revitalize pro bono programs have been generally unsuccessful.”