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Pro Bono
New York City Pro Bono Training Calendar
New York State Pro Bono Opportunities Guide
Honoring Pro Bono Achievements
New York Lawyer
August 23, 2007
By Thomas Adcock
New York Law Journal
During its annual meeting in San Francisco this week, the American Bar Association presented its Pro Bono Publico Award to Sidley Austin, citing in particular its firmwide Capital Litigation Project in which lawyers from several offices represented prisoners on Alabama's death row in post-conviction proceedings.
"The commitment that Sidley has made to death penalty representation is unprecedented," said Robin Maher, director of the ABA's Death Penalty Representation Project. "I'm not aware of any other law firm that has committed this amount of resources, people and funding to this number of cases at one time."
In 2005, Sidley established the capital project, through which the firm represents indigent prisoners. In partnership with the Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit legal services agency in Montgomery, Ala., the firm currently offers its services to 19 condemned men.
More than 120 Sidley partners, counsels and associates, along with legal assistants and project assistants, have volunteered some 29,000 hours to such cases since the project's inception.
"We hope that awards like this draw attention to the need for pro bono legal representation for the poor, including prisoners on death row," said John N. Gallo, a partner at Sidley's Chicago office who spearheaded his firm's capital project.
For his commitment to "the advancement of justice, scholarship and the legal profession in the fields of tort and insurance law," Professor Aaron D. Twerski of Brooklyn Law School was given the ABA's 2007 Robert B. McKay Law Professor Award on Sunday during the group's meeting in San Francisco.
Mr. Twerski's publications include dozens of law review articles and books on tort and product liability law. He recently returned to Brooklyn Law, where he began teaching in 1986, after serving as dean of Hofstra University School of Law. Mr. Twerski is also special counsel at Herzfeld & Rubin.
Namesake of the award, presented by the ABA's tort trial and insurance practice section, is the late Robert B. McKay, former dean of New York University School of Law who headed an investigative commission into the 1971 inmate uprising at the Attica State Correctional Facility in upstate New York.
A trio of attorneys from Schulte Roth & Zabel, along with co-counsels at nonprofit legal organizations, were finalists for the Public Justice 2007 Trial Lawyer of the Year Award during the 25th anniversary dinner of the Public Justice Foundation of Washington, D.C., held July 17 in Chicago.
The Schulte Roth attorneys - partners Howard O. Godnick and Jeffrey S. Sabin and special counsel Daniel L. Greenberg - were nominees due to their work in a class-action suit last year in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, McWaters v. FEMA, 05-5488.
The New Orleans court ordered the Federal Emergency Management Agency to provide housing assistance beyond the official cut-off for such aid to victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, some 42,000 of whom were left homeless by the 2005 storms.
It was the first time a court had ordered FEMA to change the manner in which it administered disaster relief. The order abolished a requirement that families left homeless apply for small business loans to remain eligible for housing aid. As a result, FEMA was required to pay approximately $750 million in housing assistance.
The Schulte Roth team was aided by Stephen E. Ronfeldt of The Public Interest Law Project in Oakland, Calif., and John C. Brittain of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law in Washington, D.C.
Winners of the Trial Lawyer of the Year Award were a team of government and private firm lawyers from Chicago who took up the October 2006 whistleblower case of Tyson v. Amerigroup, 92C6074, in which the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois held the Amerigroup accountable for filing 18,130 false insurance claims to state and federal agencies. The Chicago federal court ordered the corporation to pay $48 million in damages and penalties.
The plaintiff team consisted of Frederick H. Cohen, David J. Chizewer, Chad A. Blumenfeld and Ann H. Chen of Chicago-based Goldberg Kohn Bell Black Rosenbloom & Moritz; Samuel B. Cole and Michele M. Fox of the U.S. Attorney's Office in Chicago; and Paul Gaynor, David J. Adams and Anne R.K. Reader of the Illinois Attorney General's Office.
For its lawsuit begun in January in Bronx Supreme Court challenging state hospital closings and restructurings, a team of Chadbourne & Parke attorneys was honored by New York Lawyers for the Public Interest with the organization's first Pro Bono Leadership Award, presented during a ceremony last month at the firm's Rockefeller Center offices.
Lead attorney in the Matter of McKinney v. New York State Department of Health, 6034, is Chadbourne partner Thomas E. Bezanson. Others on the Chadbourne litigation team are partner George Bundy Smith and associates C. Ian Anderson, Robert Grossman and Jason Park. Partnered with the Chadbourne team were staff attorneys Jin Hee Lee and Amanda Masters of Lawyers for the Public Interest.
Assisting were Chadbourne summer associates Gilbert Bradshaw, Pragati Nayak, Amanda Raymond, Marc Roitman, Brandon Still and Nelson Wagner.
The trial court ruled against plaintiffs, who sought to halt the state's Berger Commission proposal to shut down Westchester Square Medical Center in the Bronx, along with eight other public hospitals, as well as to restructure some 50 other facilities. The suit alleged improper transfer of legislative power to unelected members of a commission. Mr. Bezanson subsequently lost in the Appellate Division, First Department. The case is now before the Court of Appeals in Albany.
In awarding the Chadbourne team its pro bono award, Michael Rothenberg, executive director of Lawyers for the Public Interest, cited the firm's "tireless advocacy, superb leadership and personal dedication" in attempting to preserve "critical health care services in medically underserved communities throughout New York."
Ira L. Herman, a partner with the New York office of Thompson & Knight, was honored by Legal Services of New York City for his service on the steering committee of the New York City Bankruptcy Assistance Project.
Mr. Herman, a member of his firm's corporate reorganization and creditors' rights practice group, was honored during Legal Services' 2007 Pro Bono Recognition Awards Reception on June 13.
To date, the city's bankruptcy project has trained more than 200 attorneys, paralegals and law students in helping indigent clients with petitions to the U.S. Bankruptcy Court. The project was launched in February 2006 after Congress passed the U.S. Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005.
Accolades reports on special recognition given to attorneys at law firms, in government and at social agencies. Submit items to tadcock@alm.com.
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