Spotlight
| 18 August 2010 |
SBLS's 2010 FundraiserSAVE THE DATE! The 9th Annual South Brooklyn Legal Services Benefit will be held on Wednesday, October 6, 2010, from 6-9 PM at Bubby’s in Brooklyn. Please click on the link below for more information about our honorees and a save the date card.
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| 18 August 2010 |
SBLS Challenges MTA's 2010 Service Cuts in Federal CourtOn August 17, 2010, plaintiffs RueZalia Watkins, Anthony Trocchia, and Clara Reiss, all people who are unable to travel long distances on their own or make use of the subway system because of their mobility impairments, along with Disabled In Action of Metropolitan New York and The Brooklyn Center for the Independence of the Disabled Inc., both non-profit agencies that advocate on behalf of disabled New Yorkers, filed suit against the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) and New York City Transit (NYCT). They are challenging cuts to the City’s bus system and its complementary paratransit system that leave them without public transportation service comparable to that provided to non-disabled people, in violation of their rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The plaintiffs are represented by South Brooklyn Legal Services, the New York Legal Assistance Group (NYLAG) and Emery, Celli, Brinckerhoff and Abady, LLP. Plaintiffs seek a permanent injunction reversing the MTA and NYCT service cuts and restoring paratransit services. The lawsuit challenges city-wide service cuts implemented by the MTA and NYCT beginning on June 27, 2010, cutting eighty-nine bus lines. These service cuts have forced transit passengers either to travel a greater distance to an alternate bus route or to travel by subway rather than by bus. For Plaintiffs, however, both of these options are impossible, thus imposing a greater hardship on people with disabilities than on people without disabilities. And they cannot rely on the City’s already overburdened paratransit system – Access-A-Ride – because rather than ensuring that additional resources are devoted to Access-A-Ride in anticipation of the increase in demand occasioned by the reduction in bus service, the Defendants have instituted or approved significant cuts to the system. There are approximately 138,000 individuals approved for Access-A-Ride and disabled riders made 5.8 million trips on Access-A-Ride in 2008; the June 27th transit cuts are estimated to eliminate 26,000 trips on Access-A-Ride each year. The individual plaintiffs all are mobility-impaired and travel either via wheelchair or with a walker. Plaintiff RueZalia Watkins uses a manual wheelchair and lives in Brooklyn. Prior to the cuts, the buses were her main means of transportation and she routinely used the B39 bus to travel from her home in Brooklyn to her work in Manhattan. She utilizes Access-A-Ride, but deficiencies with this service mean that she must miss work obligations, and work on the weekend to make up for it. Lamenting the changes to her work schedule because of the service cuts, Ms. Watkins says that the “MTA has effectively denied disabled New Yorkers in the outer boroughs access to Manhattan.” Plaintiff Anthony Trocchia has Spinal Muscular Atrophy Type 3, uses a motorized wheelchair, and is eligible for Access-A-Ride. Prior to the Defendants’ cuts to bus service, Mr. Trocchia relied on the bus system to travel from his home in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to Manhattan. Gaps between platforms and subway cars make it almost impossible for him to use the subway. And the subway lines identified as replacements for his lost bus (J, M, Z), either do not have fully accessible stations in Manhattan, where he must go for doctors’ appointments and other meetings, or do not run on the weekend. Advance booking required for Access-A-Ride means that there is no possibility of spontaneity or flexibility to deal with life’s contingencies, such as a medical appointment being delayed. Mr. Trocchia fears the impact of the service cuts on disabled New Yorkers: “Elimination of any bus route tells wheelchair users to become shut-ins.” “Either they didn’t analyze the impact that these cuts were going to have on people with disabilities or they just don’t care,” says Plaintiff Clara Reiss, who lives in Manhattan. Ms. Reiss uses a walker because of the after-effects of polio. As the result of cuts to Access-A-Ride, Ms. Reiss’ eligibility has been made contingent on the weather, even though her disability is not affected by the weather. The plaintiffs’ lawsuit asserts that the Defendants’ actions violate both the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The ADA mandates that public entities may not discriminate against people with disabilities and may not deny them the benefits of services provided to people without disabilities. And the law makes it clear that it is “discrimination” for a public entity which operates a fixed route system to fail to provide paratransit services that are “comparable to the level of designated public transportation services provided to individuals without disabilities using such system.” This includes response time, which also must be comparable, to the extent practicable, to the level of designated public transportation services provided to individuals without disabilities. 42 U.S.C. § 12143(a) (2). Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 prohibits discrimination against a protected class by any program which receives federal assistance. Said Pavita Krishnaswamy of SBLS, “the service cuts implemented by the MTA on June 27, 2010, are impermissibly depriving mobility impaired New Yorkers of the opportunity to participate fully in the rich economic, educational, recreational and cultural activities available to the rest of New York.” The plaintiffs are represented by Jennifer Levy, Cathy Bowman, and Pavita Krishnaswamy at SBLS, Jane Greengold Stevens at NYLAG, and Matthew Brinckerhoff at Emery, Celli, Brinckerhoff & Abady, LLP.
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| 29 July 2010 |
SBLS Sues Debt Settlement Company for FraudThe radio and television are filled with slick ads offering to pay off your credit card debt at half price in two to three years. Some of these ads suggest the companies are part of a federal bail-out program available only to financially strapped U.S. citizens. Some pretend they are “good guy” non-profits. In reality, these companies (called “debt settlers”) are well documented scams that evade federal and state regulators. Seventy one year old Louise McPherson learned this the hard way. Ms. McPherson relied on her credit cards to deal with such emergencies as a death in the family and decreased work. By 2007, Ms. McPherson was paying $400 a month towards $12,000 in credit card debt. Enter Financial Consulting Services and American Debt Arbitration, the later of which was banished from California in 2006 after swindling 3,000 financially strapped Californians of more than $3 million. Their plan (which is standard within the industry) was deceptively simple. Credit card companies prefer some payment rather than none. A debtor should therefore redirect his or her monthly credit card payments to the debt settler who then negotiates a settlement with the credit card companies at about 50% of what is owed. When such a settlement is reached, the payment is made from the re-directed monthly payments the debtor sent to the debt settler. What is omitted or downplayed in the sales pitch are the outrageous fees the debt settler immediately collects, thereby preventing the accumulation of any money to settle a debt. Ms. McPherson discovered this when, thirteen months into the program, a credit card company with whom the debt settlers were supposedly negotiating froze her bank account after suing her. By that time, she had paid over $5,559 to the debt settlers (almost half of what she owed her credit card companies) of which the debt settlers took $2,670 in fees. Not a single debt was settled. By this point, Ms McPherson’s overall credit card debt had shot up thousands of dollars due to non-payment fees and interest rate hikes. Her credit score had plummeted and debt collectors were calling her daily. In her lawsuit against the two debt settlers (see complaint below), Ms. McPherson seeks the return of her fees as well as damages and an order prohibiting the debt settlers from ripping off others.
(Consumer) |
| 24 June 2010 |
Frivolous Foreclosure Lawsuit Leads Brooklyn Judge to Order Sanctions Against BankA Brooklyn man being sued for foreclosure was led to a legal victory with the help of South Brooklyn Legal Services attorney Sara Manaugh. Not only did a judge find the suit frivolous, but he ordered $10,000 in sanctions against the bank for foreclosing on a property they didn’t even own. Mr. G bought a home in Bedford-Stuyvesant in 2007 with the assistance of two loans from an organization known as “GE Money Bank.” But within two years a foreclosure had been filed by a bank, U.S. Bank National Association, which claimed it had acquired the senior mortgage after the mortgage had been assigned first from GE Money Bank to a trust held by Deutsche Bank National Trust Company, and then from that trust to a different trust held by U.S. Bank. SBLS attorneys dug up online records on a database maintained by Wells Fargo, the custodian of both trusts, which revealed that Mr. G.’s mortgage loan was not owned by U.S. Bank — it was still held in the original trust. Judge Wayne P. Saitta of Kings County Supreme Court wrote, “It appears that the plaintiff never owned the debt which was the subject of the foreclosure action. Plaintiff has submitted no evidence that the note was ever transferred to it. ... Simple due diligence would have revealed that the plaintiff did not own the mortgage upon which it sought to foreclose.” The judge threw out the foreclosure lawsuit against Mr. G and ordered that U.S. Bank pay $10,000 in sanctions for this “frivolous litigation.” The judge wrote, “The court can only speculate in how many other cases plaintiffs with no interest in mortgages wrongfully foreclose on them and collect proceeds to which they are not entitled.”
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