POVERTY LAW

Heller Ehrman took on the representation of an indigent Spanish-speaking woman who was injured while riding a city bus in San Francisco. After being injured our client was pursued by a collection agency for unpaid medical bills for ambulance service and hospital care following the accident. The client has difficulty understanding English and also has psychological problems. She failed to file a claim against the City of San Francisco for reimbursement for her medical bills within the requisite six-month time period. Citing excusable neglect because none of the forms were in Spanish, the Heller Ehrman team filed a petition in the Superior Court of San Francisco for relief from the claim filing requirements and sought permission to file a complaint against the City. The Court granted the petition, and Heller Ehrman filed a complaint against San Francisco Municipal Railway and the City of San Francisco seeking payment of the existing medical bills and compensation for pain and suffering. The case is currently in discovery.

Heller Ehrman attorneys negotiated a class-action settlement providing INS detainees held at the Terminal Island Detention Center in Los Angeles with important rights and resources, including greater access to their attorneys and increased use of an adequate law library to research their individual cases.

An attorney in our Washington D.C. office has represented three African Americans falsely accused of shoplifting at a suburban mall outside of Baltimore. In the course of this engagement, the attorney testified about the case before an advisory committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission.

Heller Ehrman successfully represented a group of Sikh school children in a Ninth Circuit Petition seeking to protect the children's right to attend school while wearing the ceremonial kirpan (knife) under their clothes. The wearing of the symbolic kirpan is required by the children's religious practices.

In Aguayo v. Ilchert, Heller attorneys worked with the ACLU to successfully settle a federal class action for damages on behalf of more than 150 patrons and employees of a Hispanic-owned nightclub following a mass detention by the Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS) and the State Alcoholic Beverage Control Agency (ABC). Thirty INS and ABC agents, without warrant or consent, had descended upon the nightclub, blocked all exits and unlawfully detained and arrested everyone inside, singling out persons of Hispanic appearance for harsher treatment.

In Burton v. Southgate Town and Terrace Homes, Incorporated, Heller Ehrman worked with Legal Services of Northern California to prosecute a race discrimination case on behalf of five African American plaintiffs against a HUD-subsidized housing cooperative in Sacramento. Plaintiffs had suffered racial discrimination when they tried to buy units in the cooperative and were constantly intimidated and harassed. A settlement imposed fair housing requirements on the Defendants as part of the injunctive relief issued by the Court.

The firm teamed up with the ACLU and others to challenge the Federal "Welfare Reform Act," charging that the law unfairly eliminated or reduced benefits to a class of elderly or disabled legal immigrant residents.