Legal Aid’s Family/Domestic Violence Unit seeks pro bono assistance for an expedited appeal to the Second Department with a stay of the lower court matrimonial proceeding to ensure our client can maintain a relationship with her child. We have advocated for ongoing contact between our client and her six-year-old daughter since we took on the divorce and custody matters in December 2021. This contact has been difficult to maintain due to the opposing party’s allegations of violence and mental health concerns.

Both parties have been unable to reach an agreement pertaining to custody and parenting, prompting the court to appoint a forensic psychological expert to conduct an evaluation of the parties and make a recommendation as to custody.  As part of the evaluation, the court’s expert gave each party a 32-page survey to fill out, which by its own terms directed them not to consult with anyone while they answer the questions, including their lawyer. In response, our staff filed a motion, which was denied in its entirety, primarily seeking to disqualify the court’s expert for interfering with the attorney-client relationship based on the use of this questionnaire. The motion also referenced a movement by current legal experts to move away from the use of such evaluations in matrimonial proceedings.

Legal Aid staff wish to appeal this order immediately to ensure our client’s rights to parent her daughter are not disrupted by this forensic evaluation process, which prevents her accessing advice and representation while being directed to provide a written statement that will be produced and used in evidence at the custody trial.

A former client of our Housing Unit, TT, was out of possession of her rent stabilized Bronx apartment from April 2019 to March 2021 due to a Vacate Order after a fire in her building created dangerous conditions for her family, as well as in several other apartments in the building. The landlord initially refused any temporary relocation, saying they would only relocate our client if she would accept the relocation apartment as her new permanent apartment, attempting to force her to give up her rights to her original rent stabilized unit. TT and her two children were forced to live in a Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) shelter while they waited to return to their apartment. This relocation had a significant negative impact on the family as a result of the terrible conditions in the shelter.

Legal Aid brought an action seeking completion of repairs to allow TT’s family to return to their rent stabilized home. While in shelter, TT begged to be transferred to another location due to the horrible conditions, including filing an order to show cause to place the family elsewhere. In response, the landlord filed a motion to dismiss saying they didn’t have a place for T and that tenant placement was not a cause of action in Housing Court.  but the matter was ultimately settled because the landlord agreed to a shortened time frame to finish repairs and restore possession. TT and her kids were able to move back into her apartment in March of 2021.

New York City has now sued the landlord on a Mechanics Lien seeking reimbursement for the cost of providing shelter to TT and her family. In response, the landlord filed a Third-Party Summons/Complaint seeking to implead TT for indemnification for any costs he must pay to the city, alleging that she refused to accept a relocation apartment. A judgement against our client could cost over $20,000. .

Pro Bono Counsel is needed to defend TT and her family in the Bronx Supreme Court against the third-party claim seeking indemnification for past shelter costs. This would include filing an answer, conducting discovery, filing a Motion to Dismiss or for Summary Judgment, negotiating a possible settlement, and attorney’s fees.

Our Housing Unit seeks assistance in a Housing Preservation case that our client filed seeking repairs and alleging harassment against her landlord.

In June 2021, our client came back from vacation to find that her apartment door and most of her belongings were missing, along with her apartment having been demolished by the landlord and his agents. She had two children and was pregnant at the time, which made her situation more dire. She was subsequently locked out of the apartment in October and again in December.  In order to gain access she required assistance from the NYPD and was forced to pay a locksmith to change the locks both times. Along with these complaints, the client had no running water or heat throughout most of her tenancy.

Since the complaints were filed the landlord has never appeared in any of the court proceedings. The court found that the landlord had engaged in harassment and awarded our client $10,000 in punitive damages and $1,000 in statutory damages.

We are looking for pro bono counsel to help collect on this judgment. Although we do not have any of the landlord’s bank information, we know that he is employed by the NYPD as a police officer and are hoping to secure a lien on the property or garnish his wages.

The property in dispute was owned by our client’s great uncle. When he died, the property went to his wife in a Life Estate and then to his daughter in fee simple absolute. The daughter was not interested in the property and never took possession Our client, her parents, and husband were in exclusive physical possession of the building for decades. None of the other living parties have ever entered the building.   

Recently, our client was experiencing deep financial strain when several of her distant family members began to claim an interest in the property. Rather than fight them she decided to sell any stake that she had in the building and move. She got together with one of her family members and another title claimant and sold this property to a property management company. Around this time the other two listed sellers, recorded two mutually inconsistent deeds in their own respective names.    

The other two sellers immediately changed their mind and decided that they would not “close.” Instead, they brought an eviction case against our client, which is how the case came to The Legal Aid Society’s housing unit. The property management company then started an action for specific performance on the fully executed contract. They reached out to our client because she still wanted to do the agreement. They asked if she wanted to be listed as a co-plaintiff in that action. She said yes and as a result, she is nominally listed as a plaintiff represented by the company’s attorneys in that action.   

Legal Aid filed a motion in the Supreme Court action asking for a stay or preliminary injunction of the eviction proceeding so the title dispute could be resolved first. Soon after the motion was filed, however, we discovered a separate Supreme Court action from 2016. That action was a tax lien foreclosure involving the same property. Our client was never directly named or even allegedly served. The party seeking to foreclose filed a summary judgment motion in 2020 which appears to have been granted in March of 2022.   

Pro Bono counsel is needed to assist in resolving both Supreme Court actions. Help is needed to identify defenses to the tax lien foreclosure and to undo the default judgment recently entered in that action. Additionally, in the action for specific performance, evaluate whether our client has a way to reform the contract to match her understanding or, if that is not possible, then get the best result possible under the circumstances. 

The client is nearly 60 years old, from the Dominican Republic (DR), and has been a Lawful Permanent Resident for 40 years. All of his family, including his US citizen mother, US citizen children, and long-term partner (also a US Citizen) are in this country and he has no family in the DR. He is experiencing serious health issues, including recently diagnosed diabetes while at Orange County Jail.  His glucose levels are extremely high, and the detention facility has been unable or unwilling to manage them.  The habeas would likely raise claims related to his lack of individualized bond hearing and his medical care.

Our client only has one serious conviction, for second degree sexual abuse, 130.60(2), which was charged as an aggravated felony and crime against a child.  The allegation was that he inappropriately touched an eight-year-old relative on one occasion; the client has no memory of the incident and asserted that he was intoxicated at the time.  He received no jail time.

The Immigration Law Unit (ILU) is looking for a pro bono team to help with vacaturs in criminal courts in New Jersey and Maryland (metropolitan DC area) for a survivor of sex trafficking.  This post-conviction relief will help our client avoid removal from the United States and separation from her United States citizen children and grandchildren with whom she resides in New York City.

Our client is a 54-year-old woman from the Dominican Republic who has been living in the United States since 1992.  At that time, the client entered the United States as a lawful permanent resident.   Soon after separating from her abusive United States citizen spouse approximately eight years later,  our client, a single mother, began struggling financially. A friend offered to help her find stable employment, but instead aided in sex trafficking our client.

Our  client has been arrested three times for prostitution-related offenses.  Her first arrest was in 2002 in Plainfield, NJ, and she was convicted of engaging in prostitution and sentenced to payment of a fine.  Her second arrest took place in Virginia in 2008. She was initially charged with the offense of prostitution, but the charges were later dismissed (prosecution declined to prosecute).  Her third arrest took place in Prince George’s County, MD in 2009. She was charged with prostitution-related charges and pled guilty to prostitution in 2010; she was sentenced to time served. Our client feels deep shame regarding her past arrests and has been referred to social services to help her process and recover from the trauma of being sexually trafficked.

Because of her two convictions in New Jersey and Maryland, which are deemed crimes involving moral turpitude, our client is facing removal from the United States.  She needs at least one of her prostitution-related convictions to be vacated to prevent her deportation.  ILU is seeking assistance from a pro bono team with associates in New Jersey and Maryland to assess her vacatur options in both jurisdictions and seek vacaturs on her behalf.  ILU consulted with the Freedom Network USA/Survivor Reentry Project, Lawyers for Justice in New Jersey, and Maryland Volunteer Lawyers Service for assistance but, because of limited resources, these agencies have not been able to assist our client.

Our client is seeking pro bono representation after an unprovoked attack at Great Meadow Correctional Facility left him with extensive nerve damage. The initial request is to bring an Article 78 proceeding challenging the denial of the Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request for surveillance video of an assault in state prison. The action must be filed in either Washington or Albany County on or before October 17, 2022.

Background

In January 2022, our client was stabbed in the neck by another incarcerated person and was cut on the forehead. He underwent emergency surgery and spent five days at the hospital before returning to Great Meadow. He reports having extensive nerve damage as a result of his neck injury for which he takes two medications. The attack happened during the transfer for lunch when officers responsible for the unit’s movement failed to follow protocol and leaving the unit unsupervised and unrestrained for several minutes during which the attack occurred. Moreover, the two officers did not promptly escort our client to the infirmary, resulting in extensive bleeding prior to obtaining medical assistance.

Article 78

Our Prisoners’ Rights Project (PRP) placed a preservation demand for the audio and video footage ten days after the attack, which included the date of the video, a time range, and a precise location where the incident occurred. PRP served a FOIL request in March 2022, which was swiftly acknowledged by the Great Meadow FOIL officer. After a lengthy delay which constructively denied the request, PRP appealed to the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS). In June, the DOCCS FOIL Appeals officer denied the appeal, alleging that PRP did not “reasonably describe” the footage requested, and as such, DOCCS was unable to locate the video. Additionally, they determined the request constitutes an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy, presumably for our client’s attacker. PRP staff have both factual and legal rebuttals to those arguments for the purposes of the Article 78 action.

Ongoing Litigation

Once the video is obtained, pro bono counsel would have the first opportunity to consider whether to represent our client in a civil rights action against those responsible for failing to protect him from attack.

Legal Aid’s Exploitation Intervention Project (EIP) is looking for Pro Bono Counsel to take on a vacatur motion on behalf of a client who has been preliminary screened and deemed eligible to clear her record under CPL 440.10(i). This statute allows individuals who have certain misdemeanor convictions vacate those judgements if they are survivors of labor or sex trafficking.  

In addition to the 440 motion, our client recently learned that a person with whom she had sex recorded their encounter without her permission, posted the video of them having sex online, and listed her name. Our client has reached out to City and federal law enforcement for support, but has been unable to move forward with concrete next steps to force the removal of the recording. EIP does not have expertise in this area of the law and seeks research support in order to advise our client about next steps, and, if possible, take on litigation to force said removal of the recording. 

Our client, M and her husband were married in June 1986.  They had been married for approximately 32 years in 2018, The husband chose to relocate to California to live near a daughter from a previous marriage and advised M that he did not wish for her to relocate with him.  M remained in the parties’ co-op apartment in the Bronx (purchased jointly in 1988) and our client’s husband continued to pay the mortgage and maintenance until about October 2019.  When M’s husband stopped making the payments, he knew M had no way of making the payments on her own as her only source of income consisted of social security benefits of $1,000 per month.  He, who enjoyed pension and social security income totaling about $90,0000.00 per year, was prepared to let the apartment be lost to foreclosure.

When our client’s husband stopped making payments, M filed for divorce.  While she did not truly want to file, she did so on the advice of an attorney who told her that it would be the only way to secure any support and her marital share of her husband’s pension.

The divorce, commenced in October 2019, was litigated from approximately 2019 through early 2022.  M’s husband was in poor health for much of 2021 and until his death in April 2022.  The parties were near to settlement, which would allow M exclusive occupancy of the marital apartment and the financial means to maintain it, when her husband had a stroke in February 2022, and then later passed away in April 2022.  The divorce is (to be) abated, but M will now have to contend with estate issues.

In 1988, M and her husband respectively executed wills in which each left his/her ownership interest in the co-op apartment to the other in the event of death.  It seems, however, that our client’s spouse executed another will in California in 2021, in which he bequeathed his interest in the apartment to his daughter. Unfortunately, M and her husband held the apartment shares as tenants in common (instead of by the entirety or joint tenants with rights of survivorship) because when they purchased the apartment in 1988, co-op apartments were considered personal property instead of real property under NY law.  Although the law later changed in this regard, they never took the necessary steps to revise the title/certificate of shares.

Consequently, M is in need of advice from pro bono counsel on the law and process of probate in California and seeks advice on her rights and how she might navigate any such proceedings, particularly if she wants to hasten things along and find some resolution sooner rather than later, especially since her home of 34 years is at issue.

Right now, M is largely being held hostage by her stepdaughter with whom she shares an incredibly acrimonious relationship. Since our initial outreach, M received a copy of her husband’s death certificate and the divorce action has been abated.  It turns out that the death certificate was instead made out to reflect (falsely) that Mr. Lang’s daughter did not know if her father was married and/or to whom.

Our Bronx Housing office represents the son of a recently deceased owner of a HDFC Co-Op. The Housing Development Fund (HDFC) Co-Op is a form of affordable co-op housing intended for New Yorkers to live in long-term, as opposed to being used as investment properties. They are often priced much lower than a typical NYC apartment, but require buyers to meet certain income caps while also having significant financial assets on hand.

In 2018, our client’s mother moved from apartment 4B to apartment 2B within the co-op as an accommodation to her disability. Our client has provided us with the minutes from a meeting in which the Co-Op Board agreed to transfer his mother’s shares from her previous apartment to the apartment in which he now lives, however it appears the shares were never transferred before she died.  The Co-Op is now effectively taking the position that the mother’s estate owns neither apartment, so that they are able to evict the son from 2B, while treating 4B as property of the Co-Op as well, cheating the estate out of a very valuable asset.

Legal Aid is continuing to represent the client in the Housing Court action, but in order to favorably resolve the matter we are seeking pro bono assistance with filing the proper papers in Surrogates Court in order to ensuring the estate of the mother is protected.

Our Employment Law Unit (ELU) currently represents a disabled client who was fired from his job at a textile company after suffering an injury that caused him to miss work for three months. The client immediately notified his employer of the injury and initially used vacation and sick days to take time to recover. However, the client required additional treatment and in April 2022 applied for six to eight weeks sick leave and gave the company a firm return date.

Despite being transparent throughout his treatment, the textile company did not attempt to engage our client in any kind of interactive dialogue regarding his request for reasonable accommodation as is required by law. The company notified Mr. J. that his job would only be held for four weeks, otherwise, he would be fired. Unable to return to his job within this time period, our client was terminated.  ELU staff believe these circumstances are violations of the New York City and New York State Human Rights Law as well as the Americans with Disabilities Act. Pro Bono Counsel is needed to handle all aspects of litigation, including drafting a complaint, discovery, settlement negotiations, motion practice, and, if necessary, trial. If there is a federal claim, then an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint would also need to be filed, as well as a related matter in   SDNY. Otherwise, this matter would be filed in New York Supreme.

Our client worked at an international furniture chain store for almost ten years as a visual merchandiser (VM), planning and executing floor displays and layouts. Most of the time she worked in the store, she was the only African American woman VM. In her last couple of years when new management arrived, she saw that planning assignments were being taken away from her and reassigned to co-workers who were not African American women. Her performance evaluation, based on whether she was fulfilling her expected tasks, including planning, was inadequate for her to get a raise. She complained to the white male HR manager, but despite promises of help, the situation continued and the HR manager told her she was seen as “intimidating” and warned her she was “being watched.”  After complaining to HR, her white manager began to micro-manage her aggressively and became increasingly hostile. A few weeks after she had placed her hands on the manager’s shoulders briefly in a friendly gesture to reassure the manager that she wanted them to work together, our client was fired for allegedly being physically “intimidating” toward her manager. She has been deeply rattled by the discriminatory treatment and the retaliatory firing after giving her all to the store for nearly a decade. Unfortunately, our client still looking for a job, trying to get back on her feet, but surviving for now on unemployment insurance and Medicaid.

On behalf of the client, The Legal Aid Society just filed a charge with the EEOC. We expect this case to go right to mediation. However, if the case does not settle and proceeds to a full investigation, the investigation phase will last at least six months. Once the investigation is complete, we will receive a right-to-sue letter, giving us 90 days to file a Title VII action in federal court. Pro bono counsel will help prepare the complaint and prosecute the claims under Title VII and the NYC Human Rights Law.