Our Cases

Cutting Edge Cases

Representative Cases

• In 2009, Michael Lieberman and Naomi Mendelsohn represented a young man studying in the United States who was seeking political asylum here.  The client's father was an Iraqi government official, and he and his son, together with various members of his family, had been subject to assassination attempts by groups seeking to destabilize the Iraqi government.  Some of those attempts were successful.  The client and his family believed that his life would be in jeopardy if he returned to Iraq.  After a protracted application process, we were able to convince the Department of Homeland Security and United States Citizenship and Immigration Services that our client's fears were legitimate, and in early 2010 he was granted asylum.  As a result, he will be able to remain in the United States and to embark upon a path to citizenship.
  
  
• In February of 2009, Dan Segal and Rebecca Santoro, working in conjunction with the Juvenile Law Center, took on the representation of a class of over 4,000 juveniles who are victims of one of the worst judicial scandals in American history.  In brief, two Luzerne County, Pennsylvania judges -- a juvenile court judge and the county's President Judge --  took millions of dollars in kickbacks from the owners and builders of two private juvenile detention facilities who stood to profit from maximizing the “occupancy rate” of the facilities.  In return, the judges made sure that the County contracted to use the facilities.  They also insured that the facilities were full by routinely sentencing children to the facilities for the most minor of infractions.  The juvenile court judge also regularly allowed children to be tried without counsel and accepted and encouraged guilty pleas from children without any explanation to them of the consequences of such a plea.  Dan and Rebecca are litigating federal class action civil rights and RICO claims on behalf of their clients to recover for the immense damages they have suffered. You can learn more about this case, by visiting the Juvenile Law Center’s website.
  
  
• Sozi Tulante represents Mohammed Abdullah Taha Mattan, who for years has been detained without charges by the United States at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba.  Sozi took on this matter to provide Mr. Mattan access to judicial review of his detention.  Mr. Mattan has never been offered the opportunity to plead his case before a neutral arbiter.  In addition to traveling multiple times to Guantanamo Bay to meet with his client, Sozi has represented Mr. Mattan in connection with a habeas corpus action in federal district court in Washington D.C., military administrative proceedings in Guantanamo Bay, and proceedings before the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. 

For his work with Mr. Mattan, Sozi was honored with the 2008 Clifford Scott Green Bill of Rights Award and named Diversity Attorney of the Year by the Legal Intelligencer and Pennsylvania Law Weekly.  Sozi has also appeared on NPR and in the The Legal Intelligencer to discuss this case. 

Several Hangley Aronchick attorneys have represented low-income homeowners in connection with the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas Residential Mortgage Foreclosure Diversion Program.  Working through the Philadelphia Volunteers for the Indigent Program, our attorneys represent homeowners at conciliation conferences with lenders in an attempt to avoid foreclosure.  Our attorneys have succeeded in keeping many homeowners in their homes.  In recognition of Hangley Aronchick's committment to this work, the National Legal Aid & Defenders' Association recognized Hangley Aronchick in 2009 with a Beacon of Justice Award -- the firm's second such recognition in three years.

• HASP, led by attorneys Bonnie Hoffman and Jean Galbraith, obtained "Cancellation of Removal" on behalf of our pro bono client from the United States Immigration Court in Buffalo, NY.
  
  Our client entered the United States illegally in 1981, over twenty-seven years ago.  Just over a year ago, she was detained by immigration authorities and put into deportation proceedings.  She has three U.S. citizen sons, two of whom are serving in the United States Army (one currently in Afghanistan and the other about to leave for Iraq (for the second time)), and a sixteen year old son who, if his mother were deported, faced the possibility of remaining in the United States without any parents.
  
  HASP had been told by many people that our chances of prevailing in a challenge to those proceedings were not very great given both past experience and the increasingly rigid legal standard we had to meet.  Nevertheless, Bonnie and Jean, with the help of a testifying expert, successfully convinced the court that the client was deserving of the rarely granted "cancellation of removal", which means that instead of being deported, our client will be able to remain in the United States and become a lawful permanent resident.
   
• In 2009, after many years of hard work, we successfully obtained asylum status for one of our clients. Our client worked for the government of the department of Huila in Colombia.  One of his duties was to settle disputes in various municipalities, and as a result of some of these decisions, he came to the attention of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (the "FARC").  In 1997, he was abducted at gunpoint by the FARC and forced into the trunk of an automobile, but he managed to escape.  He later fled to the United States and, after concluding that it was not safe to return to Columbia, applied for asylum.  The government opposed his application and, after trial, an Immigration Judge denied his application.  The Immigration Judge did, however, agree with our arguments over the government’s objections that our client was eligible for asylum despite not having formally filed for asylum within one year of arriving in the United States due to certain extraordinary circumstances and that our client’s testimony was indeed credible. 

We appealed the denial of asylum relief to the Board of Immigration Appeals, which historically affirms the denial of relief to applicants in a very high percentage of appeals.  In this case, however, the Board agreed with our argument that the persecution our client suffered was as a result of his actual or imputed political opinion, reversed the Immigration Judge and ordered that our client be granted asylum.  As a result of the decision, our client will be able to remain in the United States, will be eligible for certain government benefits, will be able to get a green card and, after a number of years, will be able to become a citizen.  Michael Lieberman and John S. Stapleton handled the matter for the firm.

• In the spring of 2008, 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 two 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.
  
  
• 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 with which both mother and daughter are very happy.  Ashely received a Special Recognition Award from the Homeless Advocacy Project for her work on this case.
  
  

• Michael Lieberman 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, 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.