Cutting Edge Cases

Our attorneys seek out a wide variety of cases, ranging from copyright infringement actions to social security appeals to civil rights actions, many of which are on the cutting edge of social justice issues.

Representative Cases

• In the spring of 2008, Shara Alpern, Michael Gadarian and Alan Promer obtained habeas corpus for a juvenile who had been detained in a residential facility for nine months.  The juvenile had gone through an adjudicatory hearing without counsel, despite having never received the required colloquy concerning waiver of counsel .  Shortly after entering their appearances, the Hangley Aronchick attorneys moved for habeas corpus and for permission to file a Notice of Appeal Nunc Pro Tunc from the original adjudication.  The Petition to File Notice of Appeal Nunc Pro Tunc was quickly granted, and before it became necessary for Hangley Aronchick to file the appeal, the government stipulated to the Court awarding the juvenile habeas corpus.   The three Hangley Aronchick attorneys received the Juvenile Law Center's Pro Bono Award in recognition of their work.
  
  
• In the spring of 2007, the Juvenile Law Center asked Hangley Aronchick Segal &  Pudlin to assist it in representing three children from Lancaster County who sincerely believed that their schools’ mandatory drug testing police for students seeking to participate in extracurricular activities violated their constitutional rights.  The children refused to submit to the drug testing policy because they felt that it fundamentally conflicted with their devout Quaker faith. 

After learning about the case, Matthew Hamermesh and Leslie Kramer agreed to help out and eventually draft a complaint and motion for preliminary injunction.  Shortly thereafter, the school district and the children reached an amicable resolution of their dispute, pursuant to which the children were deemed eligible to participate in extracurricular activities.  Matthew and Leslie received the Juvenile Law Center’s Pro Bono Award in recognition of their work.

• In 2006, after years of hard work and planning, pediatric nurse Jeannine Winsness opened Exceptional Care for Children, a small, nonprofit nursing facility in Newark, Delaware that cares for chronically and terminally ill children.  Within weeks, a large, for-profit pediatric facility in another state sued Winsness and Exceptional Care, alleging that the tiny newcomer had commercially disparaged it and tortiously interfered with its business.  Although Exceptional Care believed that the charges were groundless, it rightly feared that the lawsuit could threaten its ability to remain open.  Hangley Aronchick took on the case pro bono, and Michele Hangley demonstrated to the plaintiff that not only would it lose its case, it could itself be liable for substantial damages for defamation and violation of Delaware’s “Anti-SLAPP” statute.  Shortly afterwards, the plaintiff agreed to dismiss the case, leaving Exceptional Care in a position to continue its good work. 
  
  
• Karl Stephenson Chambers’ life was spared thanks to the legal representation provided by Bill Hangley and Matt Hamermesh.  Hangley Aronchick began representing Chambers in 2003, when his capital case was remanded to the Court of Common Pleas for York County for resentencing after Chambers’ death penalty sentence was reversed on a Post Conviction Relief Act (“PCRA”) petition.  Hangley and Hamermesh sought to have Chambers sentenced to life (which in Pennsylvania means life without parole) on the grounds that he is mentally retarded and therefore, under the U.S. Supreme Court standard established in Atkins v. Virginia, ineligible to receive the death penalty.  At the June 2005 Atkins hearing, Hangley served as lead counsel and Hamermesh made closing argument.  At the close of testimony, the Honorable John S. Kennedy of the York County Court of Common Pleas ruled from the bench, finding that – notwithstanding his personal opposition to the Atkins decision – the Hangley Aronchick team had successfully impeached and discredited the Commonwealth’s witnesses and that pursuant to Atkins, Chambers was mentally retarded and could not be put to death.  The case was referred to Hangley Aronchick by the American Bar Association.
  
  
• Tad LeVan received the Equal Justice Award from Community Legal Services, Inc. for his work on the landmark victory in Nixon v. Commonwealth, in which the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania held the employment-prohibiting provisions of the Older Adults Protective Services Act to be unconstitutional.  The Court held that the statute’s broad ban prohibiting felons and many misdemeanants from holding any job in residential care facilities throughout the Commonwealth unlawfully infringed upon the individuals’ constitutional right to pursue a lawful occupation.
  
  
• Michael Lieberman is currently working on a political asylum case involving a Christian Pakistani couple who claim that they will be persecuted because of their religion if they return to Pakistan.  Michael sought out this case from a Philadelphia agency that handles immigration matters in response to his concern over U.S. immigration policy since 9/11.
  
  
• Dan Segal successfully represented a candidate for representative in the Pennsylvania General Assembly in his fight to uphold the validity of the 300 signatures he received in order to be put on the ballot.
  
  
• In 2004, Ashely Chan represented a homeless mother with a seventeen year old mentally retarded girl who wanted her daughter to attend a private educational facility which she could not afford. Since most private institutions will keep children until they are twenty-one but will not admit children after they turn eighteen, Ashely had three months to find a suitable private facility and obtain funding for the mother. Ashely quickly contacted several public agencies within Philadelphia and helped the mother find a suitable facility. Within three months, Ashely helped place the daughter in an excellent private, residential facility which both mother and daughter are very happy with.  Ashely received a Special Recognition Award from the Homeless Advocacy Project for her work on this case.
  
  

• Michael Lieberman, Shara Alpern and Naomi Mendelsohn successfully preserved the ability of an abused 17 year old girl from Guatemala to apply for permanent residency in the United States.  The girl had been physically and emotionally abused by her father (and abandoned by her mother) and then fled through Mexico to the United States, where she was apprehended by Immigration officials, and ended up in Federal custody.  If our client had not been apprehended at the border and landed in Federal custody, she would have been able simply to apply for a special immigration status that would allow her to remain in the country, based on her being a juvenile victim of abuse.  However, because she was in federal custody, she needed to get permission from certain immigration officials in order to apply.  That permission was denied in the first instance.  When she filed a Motion for Reconsideration in August, the government refused to decide it despite the rapid approach of the client’s 18th birthday, after which she would no longer be eligible for the special status. 

Immediately after undertaking this representation, Hangley Aronchick filed a complaint and motion for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction essentially asking for a mandatory injunction on an emergency basis.  Soon after the filing and the presentation of the case to the judge, the government decided to grant the motion for reconsideration, giving its consent for the client to proceed to apply for special immigration status.  Sixth months after her eighteenth birthday, our client became a lawful permanent resident of the United States.