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RUTH RITCHELL MEMORIAL AWARD
In February of 1994, our legal community and, in fact, all of Western New York was shocked and saddened by the tragic loss of three young friends who lost their lives while walking on the ice on Lake Erie. One of them was a law student and two were young attorneys. Their loss was deeply felt by all who knew them. Ruth Ritchell had recently completed serving a few months as an in-house volunteer at VLP. Her loss profoundly affected the staff and other in-house volunteers at VLP. We are proud to have named the pro bono award for in-house volunteer attorneys the “Ruth Ritchell Memorial Award.”
TRACIE L. COVEY, Esq.With economic problems hitting Western New York particularly hard this past year due to the downturn in the economy, VLP has experienced a drastic increase in requests for assistance obtaining Unemployment Insurance Benefits. With relatively few attorneys actively practicing in this area of law, the needs of prospective clients might have gone unmet. Enter Tracie Covey, with years of experience in Labor Law and a background in Human Resources prior to law school. Tracie contacted VLP and wanted to help. For the past six months, Tracie has counseled, assisted, and represented numerous VLP clients, generously donating her time several days per week. In addition, Tracie is participating as a presenter in a VLP sponsored CLE program on Unemployment Benefits Law.
ATTORNEY OF THE MORNING (LANDLORD-TENANT)
Attorney of the Morning (AOM) was created in 1990 out of the BAEC’s Task Force on Voluntary Pro Bono which Peter Brevorka chaired as President of the Bar. AOM operates in Buffalo City Court on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. It is an award winning program. The NYSBA awarded its 1991 Award of Merit to the BAEC for its “innovative” Attorney of the Morning Program.
JENNIFER STERGION, Esq. is a solo practitioner that has made a real commitment to helping low income tenants facing eviction. In the past year, she has served as our Attorney of the Morning 24 times. She has willingly filled in on short notice when another lawyer had to cancel and other occasions when she was at City Court on unrelated business and AOM was very busy, she pitched in and handled a client or two. She represented 126 clients faced with the loss of their homes in the past year. She has done an excellent job of settling cases by saving the tenancy or arranging for the clients to have extra time before moving so that they do not become homeless. Jennifer also received the 2009 New York State Bar Association President’s Pro Bono Award for Young Lawyers for the pro bono work that she provided through VLP.
BANKRUPTCY
By now, we all know that Buffalo is the 2nd poorest city in the nation. It is no wonder that so many of our low income clients need to file bankruptcy. We see many families and individuals who are in need of a fresh start, facing the loss of their homes, or garnishment of an already insufficient income.
PAUL M. POCHEPAN, Esq. is an Associate at Jeffrey Freedman Attorneys at Law who has been volunteering for several years. His expertise in bankruptcy law allows us to send him a wide range of cases. They include clients who need to save their home and clients whose only solution to a tax problem is through a bankruptcy filing. He not only accepts the more difficult cases but volunteers to take the cases of clients who come to his office who cannot afford an attorney. Paul handled 7 bankruptcy cases this year. In addition to being a very thorough lawyer, he also takes the time to reassure the clients and help them through a difficult time in their lives.
DIVORCE
Poverty can make family problems worse. This is a subject matter where we always have a list of clients waiting to be referred to a pro bono attorney. Having attorneys committed to helping by handling pro bono divorces relieves a great deal of stress for the clients and for the VLP staff.
MINDY L. MARRANCA, Esq. was a VIP award winner in 2008 and her commitment has continued into 2009. She has handled 9 divorce cases for VLP including some of the most difficult cases to refer where the spouse’s whereabouts are unknown. Normally, these cases involve an additional Order allowing for service by publication. The publication is costly for the clients. However, in one case, Mindy used her own resourcefulness to find the spouse and then got him to sign an admission of service so that all of the client’s trust funds for service could be returned to the client. When one of our volunteer attorneys became ill this year, Mindy agreed to step in and continue the case. Her participation helped not only the client, but relieved the stress on the other VLP attorney who was worried that an interruption in negotiations would impede the case.
FAMILY LAW
Many family problems (like paternity, support, orders of protection, non-parent custody, and visitation) end up in Family Court. Others end up in Supreme Court for divorce or other issues. Still others end up in Surrogate’s Court for guardianships. Some volunteer attorneys are willing to help with family law problems no matter what Court they end up in.
LEAH A. BOUGUARD, Esq. has continued her commitment to VLP which started as a law student coordinator for our Haven House Project and then as an In-House Volunteer for which she won the VLP In-House Volunteer Award in 2005. Today, as an associate at Watson, Bennett, Colligan, Johnson & Schechter, LLP, her current caseload for VLP includes adoption, custody, and divorce cases. Leah also continues to volunteer at the Haven House Clinic where she not only counsels domestic violence victims, but also acts as a mentor to each of the new law student coordinators.
NOEMI FERNANDEZ-HILTZ, Esq. began volunteering with VLP as a law grad in 1998 and has steadily increased her commitment. In 2009, Noemi handled 10 Family Law cases. In some of these cases, Noemi had been the Assigned Counsel on custody or visitation matters and then sent the client to VLP and asked to be assigned for the support issues and/or divorce in order to have continuity for the client. Of course, it goes without saying that her bilingual abilities allows us to fill the numerous requests we receive for a Spanish speaking attorney. In fact, we often have clients ask for her when they first come to see us.
VLP V.I.P. AWARD
This award is for those who have been particularly important to the success of VLP and to the relative sanity of the VLP staff. This is due to the award winner’s long time commitment and willingness to help in ways that that few others are willing to do.
C. KENNETH FOIT, Esq. is a solo practitioner who began helping VLP with the Habitat for Humanity house closings in 2003 and won the VIP award in 2005 for all his work. His standard response to our requests is always, “Send them over, that’s what I do, my office is set up for real estate.” He has increased his participation at VLP to handling the majority of the Habitat for Humanity house closings this year. In addition, he also made 11 appearances in Buffalo City Court at the Attorney of the Morning program helping 39 clients with their eviction defense proceedings.
LITIGATION AWARD
For VLP, Litigation is a category that includes consumer issues, student loan problems, collection defense, torts defense, appeals and matters which do not fit into one of our other categories and for which an action was started. These cases can be time consuming and, at times, logistically difficult since the clients have very little money for disbursements.
TRACEY EHLERS, Esq. is an Associate at Nixon Peabody, LLP who has recently concluded two litigation matters for VLP clients. In the first one she took over a tort defense case when Bess Ollinick, who had been handling the case, left Nixon Peabody to join VLP’s staff. She successfully settled the case with a discontinuance against our client, who was one of the defendants. Tracey also worked with John Weinholtz, Nixon’s Pro Bono Partner in their Buffalo office, to handle a contract matter in which our client was being sued by a home improvement contractor. A discontinuance was also achieved for this client. She spent a total of 54 hours on these 2 cases.
KEVIN KRUPPA, Esq. is an Associate who handles insurance litigation at Rupp, Baase, Pfalzgraf, Cunningham & Coppola, LLC. He represented a young lady who was one of four co-defendants in a tort action. She was without insurance and was facing the possibility of a huge judgment that would have likely forced her into bankruptcy. Kevin was able to protect our client and get a release and discontinuance against her after one of the other co-defendants agreed to a small cash settlement for the plaintiff. Kevin spent a total of 70 hours on this matter.
IMMIGRATION
The Immigration Project at VLP is now in its 9th year. The main focus of the project is to provide assistance to men held in the Federal Detention Facility in Batavia. Many of the detained immigrants that we assist are longtime lawful permanent residents who now find themselves in removal (deportation) proceedings.
FRANK C. CALLOCCHIA, Esq. is a litigator at Damon & Morey has volunteered to handle four immigration cases, committing countless hours of pro bono services in each, as well as presenting at our annual CLE in September to motivate other attorneys to follow his footsteps. All four cases handled by Frank involved men in removal proceedings-- one of whom was detained by the immigration authorities-- and feared returning to their native countries because they had been, or would be, persecuted. He prevailed on two cases, and one remains pending. (The fourth was closed when the client was released from custody and moved out of the area). Among them: A Tibetan monk from Nepal, who has now become a permanent resident of the United States; a Chadian political dissident who will soon apply for his permanent residence; and a Mauritanian whose land was seized by the government and who fears being enslaved in his country since Mauritania still practices slavery. Frank’s willingness to represent the most desperate and vulnerable among us is extraordinary. Studies have indicated that an asylum-seeker represented by counsel has a 21% greater chance of gaining such relief than one who does not have the benefit of counsel. Frank has clearly changed the lives of the two men for whom he won asylum and will undoubtedly affect more lives in the future. It is telling that both of his former clients stay in touch with him.
LARGE LAW FIRM AWARD
In 1999, through the efforts of the Erie County Bar Foundation and with funding from the Julia R. and Estelle L. Oishei Foundation, VLP was able to establish a program designed to facilitate the participation of attorneys at larger law firms in representing our clients. The program has been successful. The number of firms under the aegis of this project has grown to 15. The firms involved have dramatically increased the number of civil legal services matters that they have handled for the economically disadvantaged.
DAMON & MOREY, under the direction of their Pro Bono Coordinator, Marylou Roshia, Esq., has provide tremendous help to VLP during the past year. Six attorneys (Marylou Roshia, Amber Storr, Mike Amodeo, Taylor Miranda, Kara Addelman, and Jill Apa) and one law graduate (Stacey Budzinski) have just completed a VLP training and taken 27 In Rem Tax Foreclosure defense cases for VLP clients. The firm also handled 19 In Rem Tax Foreclosure defense cases at the end of 2008 (Marylou Roshia, Amber Storr, Mike Amodeo, Jennifer Catherine and Andrew Borden). In addition, Damon & Morey attorneys have worked on 18 other cases including 5 Immigration cases (Jill Apa, Jesse Baldwin, Frank Callochia, and Michael Marszalkowski), 1 illegal lockout (Carroll Meghan), 1 bankruptcy (Jennifer Catherine), 1 collection defense matter (John Ford), 1 estate (Jennifer Flannery), 1 Article 17-A Guardianship (Jennifer Flannery) , 2 name changes (Jennifer Rodgers), 1 tort defense case (Marylou Roshia), 1 child support case (Gregory Zini and Taylor Miranda), and 3 incorporations of small not for profit groups (Marc Krawiek and Ryan Micklus). In addition, Pam Fielding represented VLP by preparing a new 403-B plan in compliance with new IRS guidelines.
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