Category: Media release

RALEIGH · Jan. 30, 2018 — Legal Aid of North Carolina’s 2017 Associates Drive raised more than $18,000 in support of Legal Aid’s work helping low-income North Carolinians in civil legal cases involving basic human needs like safety, shelter and income.

The Associates Drive is a two-week campaign in which associates at Triangle and Triad area law firms come together to raise funds in support of Legal Aid. The drive had more than 200 participants, a record-breaking number for the campaign, from 25 law firms.

Associates from the following law firm’s participated:

Triangle area law firms

Brooks Pierce*
Cranfill Sumner & Hartzog
Ellis & Winters
K&L Gates
Manning Fulton*
McGuireWoods
Morningstar Law Group
Ogletree Deakins
Parker Poe Adams & Bernstein
Poyner Spruill*
Smith Anderson Law Firm
Smith Moore Leatherwood*
Teague Campbell Dennis & Gorham*
Tharrington Smith
Williams Mullen*
Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice
Wyrick Robbins Yates & Ponton
Yates, McLamb & Weyher
Young Moore and Henderson*

Triad Area law firms

Bell Davis Pitt*
Brooks Pierce
Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton
Nexsen Pruet*
Schell Bray
Smith Moore Leatherwood
Tuggle Duggins*

* indicates 100% firm participation

Category: Media release

CHARLOTTE · May 3, 2019 — Last week, our Charlotte office bid farewell to Brett Shockley, an assistant general counsel with Bank of America who spent the last three months serving as a member of our housing team, representing tenants in small claims and district courts.

In one of his cases, Brett saved his client from eviction and went the extra mile to save his client’s incredibly valuable housing subsidy. The subsidy had been terminated due to the client’s violation of a minor and technical rule involving the subsidy program’s administrative procedures.

During their first consultation, Brett realized that his client had a cognitive disability and could not read and write well, which explained why his client broke the program’s rules: his client simply didn’t understand them.

Brett stopped the eviction and, citing his client’s cognitive and literacy challenges, asked the landlord and housing authority to make a reasonable accommodation and reinstate the housing subsidy. The housing authority required a letter from the Social Security Administration to grant the reasonable accommodation request.

Brett’s client was not able to get the letter on his own, and they were on a time crunch. Brett drove his client to the social security office and waited with his client for hours to get the letter, which saved his client’s subsidy.

“That’s just one example of the dedication Brett showed to our clients while he was here,” said Isaac Sturgill, housing supervisor in our Charlotte office.

“The effort he put into helping his client moved me,” Isaac said. “He’s been an amazing asset. He handled 24 cases while he was here, which is a lot for someone who came in with minimal experience in landlord-tenant law.”

“Working with Legal Aid has been an eye-opening experience,” Brett said. “I have a much greater appreciation of the struggles that low-income people face on a day-to-day basis.”

Brett came to Legal Aid thanks to Bank of America’s participation in Charlotte Triage, an effort by Charlotte businesses and law firms to help address critical legal problems confronting city residents.

David Leitch, Bank of America’s general counsel, spoke at the Charlotte Triage launch event last year.

“At a meeting before the kickoff, I asked him to lend us an attorney for a few months,” said Tommy Holderness, a supervising attorney in our Charlotte office. “And he did!”

“We are incredibly grateful to Brett for his service, to Bank of America for ‘lending’ him to us, and to all the other partners in Charlotte Triage: Duke Energy, McGuireWoods and Wells Fargo,” said Cindy Patton, managing attorney of our Charlotte office.

“We look forward to finding other creative ways to work with community partners to address the legal needs of residents of our community who cannot afford to hire attorneys,” Patton added.

Are you a private attorney who wants to make a difference for those in need in your community? Visit our Pro Bono Programs to learn more about our pro bono opportunities.

Category: Media release

Barbara Degen (right), senior managing attorney of the Morganton office of Legal Aid of North Carolina, receives the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Disability Advocacy Section of North Carolina Advocates for Justice. Hilary Ventura (left), staff attorney in the Morganton office, presented the award.

MORGANTON, Jan. 11, 2017 – Long-time legal aid attorney Barbara Degen received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Disability Advocacy Section of the North Carolina Advocates for Justice at its annual meeting and CLE in Greensboro last month. The award honors Degen for “her incredible contributions to her profession,” according to the organization.

Degen has practiced poverty law in North Carolina for her entire legal career. In 1982, a few months after earning her law degree from Duke University, she turned down several lucrative job offers at private firms to become a staff attorney with Catawba Valley Legal Services (CVLS), the independent non-profit predecessor of the Morganton office of Legal Aid of North Carolina (LANC).

Photo caption: Barbara Degen (right), senior managing attorney of the Morganton office of Legal Aid of North Carolina, receives the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Disability Advocacy Section of North Carolina Advocates for Justice. Hilary Ventura (left), staff attorney in the Morganton office, presented the award.

At that time, CVLS was housed in temporary office space that was heated by wood that staff had to lug in from outside.

“If that didn’t scare her into running into the open arms of a corporate firm, nothing would,” said Hilary Ventura, a staff attorney in LANC’s Morganton office, who presented the award. “In fact, it likely strengthened her resolve.”

Degen chose to specialize in public benefits law early on in her career and is now known as Legal Aid’s “benefits guru,” in Ventura’s words. “She truly is,” Ventura said. “Over the years, Barbara’s impact has been significant, not just in western North Carolina, but throughout the state because of her expertise in Social Security disability and other areas of benefits law.”

From 1996 to 2000, Degen led the state legal aid community’s public benefits task force, which put her in charge of coordinating public benefits advocacy at a statewide level. During that time, she spearheaded a project to provide representation to several thousand low-income disabled children who were terminated from the federal Social Security disability program following the implementation of welfare reform in 1996. She currently holds a comparable position as LANC’s public benefits practice group manager.

In 1997, Degen became the co-director of CVLS, serving in that capacity until 2002, when it merged with other civil legal aid providers to form Legal Aid of North Carolina. Degen became the office’s senior managing attorney, the position she holds today. She is also the regional manager of LANC’s West region, which includes six of the organization’s field offices.

North Carolina’s legal community previously recognized Degen for her accomplishments, including her contributions to the decades-long Alexander v. DHHS class-action lawsuit against the Social Security Administration, when the North Carolina Bar Association honored her with its Outstanding Legal Services Attorney Award in 1995.

In January 2016, North Carolina Chief Justice Mark Martin appointed her to serve as a member of the North Carolina Equal Access to Justice Commission, a group established by the state supreme court to expand access to the civil justice system for low-income North Carolinians. She has also served on the boards of Legal Services of Southern Piedmont and the North Carolina Association of Women Attorneys, and on the executive committee of the Disability Advocacy Section of North Carolina Advocates for Justice, serving as its chairperson in 2011-12.

Degen does not confine her public service to the legal community. From 1988 to 1994, she served on the board of directors of Options of Burke County, a shelter and advocacy organization for victims of domestic violence, sexual assault and rape. She was board treasurer for several of those years. Degen also served two terms on the North Carolina Human Relations Commission from 2000 to 2008. Finally, she co-founded the local chapter of Amnesty International in Morganton in the ’80s.

Concluding her remarks to the audience of Barbara’s colleagues at the event, Ventura said, “I have had the privilege of working day to day with Barbara and I am a better person for it, as I know are all of you who have worked with her over the course of your careers.”

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About Legal Aid of North Carolina

Legal Aid of North Carolina is a statewide, nonprofit law firm that provides free legal services in civil matters to low-income people in order to ensure equal access to justice and to remove legal barriers to economic opportunity. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Media Contact

Sean Driscoll, Director of Public Relations, 919-856-2132, seand@legalaidnc.org

Category: Media release

← Back to Disaster Relief

Partnership between Legal Aid of North Carolina, ECU Brody School of Medicine, Vidant Health, and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Foundation highlights health and social effects of storms

RALEIGH, May 31, 2017 – June 1 marks the start of hurricane season, a troubling reality for the people of eastern North Carolina who are still dealing with the aftermath of last October’s Hurricane Matthew.

The effects of hurricanes linger long after their waters recede, particularly the long-term health impacts. Those concerns drive a new partnership – focusing on communities impacted by Hurricane Matthew – between Legal Aid of North Carolina, the East Carolina University (ECU) Brody School of Medicine, and Vidant Health. This effort is funded in part by a $375,000 grant from the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Foundation (Blue Cross NC Foundation).

Damage from wind and rising waters is often the most visible devastation of hurricanes, yet it is the residual health effects brought about by the water damage that can go unnoticed, except by those who live in homes still damp with mold and the health care providers who see them for related illness, such as asthma. However, treating the health conditions of those impacted by storm-related environmental hazards is only part of the solution. Addressing the source of the problem is also critical.

“Asthma is a chronic respiratory condition that makes it difficult to breathe,” said Dr. Greg Kearney of ECU’s Department of Public Health. “For many people with asthma, avoiding environmental ‘triggers’ like exposure to mold inside the home is important to decrease their risk of having an asthma attack. Most people don’t realize that eastern North Carolina has the highest rates of childhood asthma in the state, accompanied by a high percentage of poor quality rental housing. As we get into the hot summer months, homes that were impacted by flooding from Hurricane Matthew and not properly repaired may start to show visible signs of mold inside the home. This could pose a serious threat for people with asthma and allergies.”

ECU and Vidant Health are partners in the Eastern Carolina Asthma Prevention Program (ECAPP), which focuses on low-cost approaches people can take to reduce asthma triggers in their homes. A big challenge for the program has been that renters, particularly those who live in communities with few affordable housing options, have little control over many of the most significant contributors to unhealthy housing conditions, like:

mold caused by roof leaks
damp foundations
inadequate ventilation

Many renters are unable to persuade their landlords to make necessary repairs or worry that their requests will lead to retaliatory eviction, which is prohibited in North Carolina.

This is the basis for the collaboration with Legal Aid’s Medical-Legal Partnership program, a nationally-established model built on the recognition that good health depends on many non-medical factors that occur outside the walls of clinics and hospitals. It connects low-income patients who are dealing with difficult and stressful situations – such as unsafe rental housing, wrongful evictions, and improper denial of FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency), food assistance, or other safety-net services – to resources to seek legal remedies, using the health care provider as the primary referral source.

As a result of this initiative, medical providers in ECAPP will now have a direct resource for patients in need of legal intervention for a variety of problems that may have been caused by or made worse by Hurricane Matthew. The program expects to serve families in Vidant’s 29-county service area, with assistance from legal advocates from Legal Aid offices located throughout the eastern part of the state, including those in Greenville, Wilson, Ahoskie, and Wilmington.

“The Vidant Medical Center Pediatric Asthma Program has been caring for children with asthma through case management, patient and family education, and care standardization for more than 20 years. Case management is trained to identify unhealthy living conditions that can negatively impact a child’s asthma and overall health status,” said Theresa Blount, coordinator for the award-winning Pediatric Asthma Program. “This partnership enhances our ability to secure unique resources for children suffering with asthma in order for them to live healthier and more productive lives.”

It is the link between housing conditions and health that made this effort so appealing to the Blue Cross NC Foundation, as they looked for an opportunity to support communities impacted by Hurricane Matthew.

“We know that improving health doesn’t just mean improving access to health care,” said Kathy Higgins, president of the Blue Cross NC Foundation. “Health is built in our homes, in our communities, in our environments. For many of the most vulnerable North Carolinians, Matthew was not the first natural disaster to impact their lives, and it won’t be the last. This partnership focuses on improving the environmental, social, and economic devastation caused by storms.”

Based on experience, Legal Aid anticipates that it could take six to seven years for Matthew-related legal assistance needs to subside. As the program develops it will expand to focus on other social determinants of health, such as food insecurity, domestic violence, and benefits eligibility, many of which are likely to be identified by ECAPP staff who visit families in their homes.

“Many communities in rural, eastern North Carolina were already burdened, before Hurricane Matthew’s devastating impact, with chronically-high rates of extreme poverty and inadequate access to many of the resources that are essential for health and economic opportunity,” said George R. Hausen, Jr., executive director of Legal Aid of North Carolina. “Disaster recovery efforts require strategic, long-term investments from every part of our state. By working with our collaborators from ECAPP, we hope to be able to remediate the unmet legal needs of many of Vidant Health’s most vulnerable, low-income patients and that our collaboration will result in better health outcomes for patients and communities throughout eastern North Carolina.”

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About Legal Aid of North Carolina
Legal Aid of North Carolina is a statewide, nonprofit law firm that provides free legal services in civil matters to low-income people in order to ensure equal access to justice and to remove legal barriers to economic opportunity.

About the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University
The Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University is nationally recognized for preparing primary care physicians who practice in medically underserved communities. All those admitted are North Carolina residents and the majority of its graduates practice primary care in North Carolina. Brody’s research includes a strong focus on cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and preventive care. Brody partners with Vidant Health to provide a teaching hospital, sharing faculty physicians in broad service areas such as critical care, surgery, emergency care, and trauma. It also operates ECU Physicians, the clinical practice for the Brody School of Medicine.

About Vidant Health
Vidant Health is a mission-driven, 1,439-bed health system that annually serves more than 1.4 million people in 29 eastern North Carolina counties. The not-for-profit system is made up of 12,000 employees, eight hospitals, home health, hospice, wellness centers, and Vidant Medical Group, a multispecialty physician and provider group with more than 420 providers in 80 practice sites. Vidant Health is affiliated with the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University. As a major resource for health services and education, Vidant Health has a mission to improve the health and well-being of eastern North Carolina. For more information, visit www.vidanthealth.com.

About Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Foundation
The Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina (Blue Cross NC) Foundation is an independent, charitable foundation with the mission of improving the health and well-being of North Carolinians. Since its founding in 2000, Blue Cross NC Foundation has invested more than $113 million in North Carolina communities through more than 870 grants. Blue Cross NC Foundation grantmaking and special initiatives are focused in three key areas: improving health outcomes of populations served by safety net organizations; increasing physical activity and access to healthy, local foods; and increasing the effectiveness of nonprofit organizations and their leaders. The Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Foundation is an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association. More information is available at bcbsncfoundation.org.

Contacts

Sean Driscoll, Legal Aid North Carolina, seand@legalaidnc.org, 919.856.2132

Amy Adams Ellis, Brody School of Medicine, East Carolina University, ELLISA14@ecu.edu, 252.744.3764

Amy Holcombe, Vidant Health, Amy.Holcombe@vidanthealth.com, 252.847.2725

Amon Marstiller, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Foundation amon.marstiller@bcbsncfoundation.org, 919.451.0096

Category: Media release

BOONE · Oct. 26, 2017 – Legal Aid of North Carolina hosted an open house Oct. 23 at its office in downtown Boone to mark the recent reopening of the office and to celebrate its long history of service to the poor and vulnerable in the High Country.

The event followed the special 50^th anniversary session of the N.C. Court of Appeals at the Watauga County Courthouse earlier that day. Chief Judge Linda McGee, a staunch supporter of legal aid while practicing law in Boone, attended the open house as an honored guest.

Attendees braved the elements – heavy rain throughout the day caused historic flooding in the city – to join the celebration, which marked the reestablishment of Legal Aid’s presence in the area after a six-year hiatus.

In 2011, severe budget cuts forced us to close some of our smaller offices, including the Boone office, which served seven counties – Alleghany, Ashe, Avery, Mitchell, Watauga, Wilkes and Yancey – with only a staff of four. The move was painful. Some staff lost their jobs, and our Morganton and Winston-Salem offices had to step in to serve those counties.

The distances involved made it challenging, but our resilient staff, aided by an amazing network of private attorneys, worked hard to ensure that clients weren’t left behind. Denise Lockett, managing attorney of the office in 2011, stayed on staff to serve clients in the area during part of the time the office was closed.

This year, thanks to domestic violence funding from the Governor’s Crime Commission and a foundation grant to cover renovations, we were finally able to reopen the office. Jonathan Perry, a Legal Aid attorney since graduating from Elon Law in 2010, moved from our Sylva office to serve as the supervising attorney. He was soon joined by Anne Evangelista, a 2015 Elon Law grad and former private attorney.

The team is already hard at work. For now, they handle mostly domestic violence cases in the office’s original seven-county service area. (The Morganton and Winston-Salem offices continue to handle most other cases in the area.) In one of their cases, Jonathan and Anne won a protective order for a woman who was beaten for three straight hours by her husband.

The duo is continuing a tradition of service that dates back four decades, when Legal Services of the Blue Ridge was founded as an independent civil legal aid program. Sam Furgiuele, one of its first directors, boasted to a local paper in 1991 that the program had taken cases all the way to the state Supreme Court and appeals court, and to the federal court of appeals.

Legal Services of the Blue Ridge also participated in a robust regional pro bono effort, Blue Ridge Area Volunteer Lawyers. In 1992, Chief Judge McGee, then a private attorney in Boone, won a Pro Bono Award from the N.C. Bar Association for her service to the program.

In 1998, Legal Services of the Blue Ridge joined other independent programs to form Legal Services of North Carolina, an integrated, multi-region program that, four years later, with the addition of other programs, would become the statewide Legal Aid of North Carolina.

Today, we are proud to carry on this long tradition of service in the High Country, and we thank and honor everyone who has made and continues to make that service possible.

Category: Media release

Greenville office to serve Beaufort, Carteret, Craven, Jones and Pamlico counties

NEW BERN, June 9, 2016 – Due to severe budget cuts sustained by the organization in recent years, Legal Aid of North Carolina is closing its office at 607 Broad St. in New Bern today after 35 years of providing free civil legal aid to the area’s low-income residents. Staff are relocating to Legal Aid’s Greenville office, which will assume responsibility for serving residents of Beaufort, Carteret, Craven, Jones and Pamlico counties. The Greenville office already serves Hyde, Martin, Pitt, Tyrell and Washington counties.

“While we hate to leave the city we’ve called home for so long, we want our clients and the community to know that Legal Aid of North Carolina isn’t really going anywhere,” said David Caddigan, managing attorney of the New Bern office. “We’re only moving an hour away and, though it will be challenging, we are dedicated to providing the same level of service to our clients from Greenville.”

Staff from the New Bern office and their colleagues in Greenville have been formulating a plan to minimize the office closure’s impact on clients in the five-county New Bern service area.

“We plan to visit as many community agencies as possible in the area to let them know that we are still in the community, and ask them to help spread the word,” said Sandy Lee, managing attorney of Legal Aid’s Greenville office. “It will be crucially important for us to work with our partner organizations to maintain a real presence here. We want everyone in need to know that we are still here for them.”

George Hausen is the executive director of Legal Aid of North Carolina, which is headquartered in Raleigh and has field offices all over the state. Hausen says that the organization’s centralized intake model, whereby clients apply for help online or via its statewide toll-free Helpline instead of traveling to their local office, eliminates most of the disruption that an office closure can have on the community.

“In a sense, not much is changing for our clients,” Hausen said. “They can still apply for our help online or call our toll-free Helpline. They didn’t need to walk into our New Bern office for help before, and they don’t need to travel to Greenville now. If we need to meet with clients, we’ll rack up the mileage.”

Legal Aid’s typical cases involve domestic violence, landlord-tenant issues and other housing matters, problems with public benefit programs, and consumer issues like illegal debt collection and deceptive trade practices.

From 2014 to 2015, Legal Aid of North Carolina lost about $1.5 million in revenue from a variety of sources, including the state legislature, which eliminated an appropriation to civil legal aid organizations under the state’s Access to Civil Justice Act. The budget cuts forced Legal Aid to lay off about 15 percent of its workforce last year. The New Bern office lost four of its eight employees, including two attorneys and a senior paralegal.

Legal Aid of North Carolina’s New Bern office launched in 1981 as Pamlico Sound Legal Services, then an independent legal aid office. Twenty-one years later, in 2002, most of the state’s independent legal aid offices joined forces to form Legal Aid of North Carolina, a unified, statewide organization. Pamlico Sound Legal Services became the new organization’s New Bern office.

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Media Contact
Sean Driscoll, Director of Public Relations, 919-856-2132

Category: Media release

RALEIGH · May 1, 2019 – Thanks to Chad Essick, a partner with Poyner Spruill in the firm’s Raleigh office, one of our clients received a check for more than $2,000 this week — long overdue compensation for getting ripped off by a landlord a few years ago.

At that time, our client thought she was moving into a new apartment. Instead, the landlord took her first-month’s rent and security deposit, but moved someone else into the unit.

Incensed at the theft, Chad sued the landlord, who then filed for bankruptcy. Undeterred, Chad’s firm filed a “proof of claim” in the bankruptcy case, seeking to establish our client as a creditor whom the landlord might have to repay before discharging his debts. The move initially resulted in our client receiving a few hundred dollars to cover her lost security deposit. We all thought that was the end of it.

Fast forward to last week, when our client unexpectedly got a check for more than $2,000 as partial payment for our client’s claim as an unsecured creditor.

“This is an outstanding result for the client given the difficult circumstances,” said Nathan Koenning, pro bono coordinator in our Central Intake Unit. “It’s also a neat example of creditors’ rights being used to compensate a victim.”

“I was happy to work on this case,” Chad said. “The client’s story was very compelling, and she was very emotional when I called her to tell her about the money.”

“His terrific work — and persistence — on behalf of our client is much appreciated,” said George Hausen, our executive director.

Learn about our pro bono opportunities!

Category: Media release

RALEIGH · Jan. 22, 2018 – Legal Aid of North Carolina will join the North Carolina Bar Foundation to announce a record-breaking gift to the NCBF Endowment’s LANC Fund on Wednesday, Jan. 24, at 2 p.m. at Legal Aid’s downtown Raleigh office at 224 S. Dawson St.

Read the press release from the North Carolina Bar Foundation to learn more:

NCBF Receives Largest Gift

The North Carolina Bar Foundation (NCBF) has received its largest gift ever as the result of planned gifts totaling nearly $1 million from the late Charles D. Dixon.

The funds have been designated to the NCBF Endowment’s Legal Aid of North Carolina (LANC) Fund, which Dixon helped launch in 2007 with a lead gift of $100,000. The Hickory attorney, who practiced from more than 60 years with Patrick, Harper & Dixon, died in 2016.

The Foundation’s largest gift since its establishment in 1960 will be formally announced on Wednesday, Jan. 24, at the downtown Raleigh office of Legal Aid of North Carolina, located at 224 S. Dawson Street.

The ceremony begins at 2 p.m. and media members are encouraged to attend.

Proceeds from the endowed gift will underwrite a dedicated position in LANC’s Morganton office, which serves Alexander, Avery, Burke, Caldwell, Catawba, McDowell, Mitchell, Watauga and Yancey counties in northwest North Carolina.

“Endowing a position in Morganton in his name would be the most appropriate way to honor Mr. Dixon,” said George Hausen, executive director of LANC. “That way, hundreds of people will get legal representation who otherwise would not have.

Category: Media release

RALEIGH · February 15, 2019 – On January 28, 2019, the Village of Clemmons and Village of Clemmons Village Council agreed to settle a fair housing discrimination claim brought by two affordable developers over the village’s refusal to allow an affordable housing community to be built. As part of the settlement, the village has paid $150,000 to compensate the developers for their losses and for their attorney’s fees. Members of the village council will also attend fair housing trainings sponsored by the North Carolina Human Relations Commission.

The complainants were represented by Legal Aid of North Carolina’s Fair Housing Project and the North Carolina Justice Center. The case was filed with the North Carolina Human Relations Commission in December 2015 on behalf of Sylvan Road Partners, LLC, and Allegro Investment Properties, LLC. The complaint alleged that the Clemmons Village Council’s actions in 2015 violated the federal Fair Housing Act and the North Carolina State Fair Housing Act, because the proposed housing community contained affordable housing units and because of the race of the perceived future occupants of the proposed development.

Lauren Brasil, a staff attorney at the Fair Housing Project stated, “Unlawful housing discrimination should not be a barrier to affordable housing development in North Carolina. The Fair Housing Project is committed to ensuring equal housing opportunities for all North Carolinians and enforcing our fair housing laws.”

Jack Holtzman, senior staff attorney at the North Carolina Justice Center, noted, “It is important that local governments understand that their decisions regarding affordable housing developments are covered by the state and federal Fair Housing Acts, and that they face real consequences by violating those laws. We appreciate that the current village council has agreed to resolve this matter.”

The federal Fair Housing Act and the North Carolina State Fair Housing Act both prohibit discrimination based on race, color, religion, national origin, sex, disability, and familial status. In addition, North Carolina’s law prohibits discrimination based on the fact that a development or proposed development contains affordable housing units.

Launched in 2011 with funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Legal Aid’s Fair Housing Project is the state’s only full-service fair housing enforcement organization. The project provides legal representation to victims of discrimination, conducts undercover fair housing testing, and provides training and education programs on fair housing law to community advocates, landlords, and local government officials, among others. The project has brought cases in federal and state courts, and initiated administrative proceedings before HUD, the North Carolina Human Relations Commission and local human relations commissions across the state. Since its founding, the project has helped obtain over $6.6 million in relief for victims of discrimination.

North Carolinians seeking information about their rights under the federal Fair Housing Act or who believe they are a victim of housing discrimination can call the project’s statewide toll-free helpline at 1-855-797-FAIR (3247). All conversations are completely confidential.

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Legal Aid of North Carolina is a statewide, nonprofit law firm that provides free legal services in civil matters to low-income people in order to ensure equal access to justice and to remove legal barriers to economic opportunity. Our Fair Housing Project works to eliminate housing discrimination and to ensure equal housing opportunity for all people through education, outreach, public policy initiatives, advocacy and enforcement. The Project is supported by grants from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Fair Housing Initiatives Program. Learn more at LegalAidNC.org and FairHousingNC.org.

Media Contacts

Sean Driscoll, Director of Public Relations, Legal Aid of North Carolina, 919-856-2132, seand@legalaidnc.org
Lauren Brasil, Staff Attorney, Fair Housing Project, Legal Aid of North Carolina, LaurenB@legalaidnc.org
Jack Holtzman, Senior Staff Attorney, North Carolina Justice Center, jack@ncjustice.org

The work that provided the basis for this publication was supported by funding under a grant with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The substance and findings of the work are dedicated to the public. The author and publisher are solely responsible for the accuracy of the statements and interpretations contained in this publication. Such interpretations do not necessarily reflect the views of the Federal Government.

Category: Media release

WILMINGTON · June 18, 2019 — Wilmington lawyer Jean Sutton Martin has directed $250,000 in cy pres funds to Legal Aid of North Carolina, one of the largest cy pres gifts Legal Aid has ever received. Legal Aid received the first check from the settlement administrator in May.

“We are incredibly grateful to Jean,” said George R. Hausen, Jr., executive director of Legal Aid of North Carolina. “This is the equivalent of a handful of attorney salaries for us. It means that we can provide justice to hundreds of North Carolinians in need. It will make a real difference.”

“Cy pres and other court awards are a great way for private attorneys to support Legal Aid,” said Hausen. “We hope this award inspires others to think of us when the time comes to direct cy pres funds.”

“I have been a longtime supporter of Legal Aid,” said Martin, an attorney with the Complex Litigation Group of Morgan & Morgan, P.A.

“I learned about Legal Aid early in my career and have supported it throughout,” she said. “It helps that I get an annual phone call from Lee Crouch reminding me of my ethical obligation to support access to justice.”

Lee Crouch is an attorney with Block, Crouch, Keeter, Behm & Sayed, LLP, in Wilmington. He is a former member of Legal Aid of North Carolina’s board of directors and is active in local efforts to encourage attorneys to support Legal Aid through pro bono work and financial contributions.

Cy pres funds are money left over from settlements in class-action cases. When class members do not claim all the settlement money in the court-established fund, the parties in the case can arrange for the remainder to be used for a purpose related to the issues involved in the case. Cy pres is an Anglo-French term roughly meaning “as near as possible.”

“Legal Aid does a lot of consumer protection work,” Martin said, “which is a nice extension of our consumer cases, so Legal Aid naturally came to mind in this case. We are grateful that the defendant and the Court in this matter agreed Legal Aid was an appropriate cy pres recipient.”

The case that generated these funds involved a phishing scam that exposed the confidential personal information, including Social Security numbers, of thousands of employees of a Greensboro aviation services company. Many of the employees became victims of identity theft as a result. The case, Linnins v. Haeco Americas, Inc. (1:16-CV-00486), settled in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina in 2018.

The NC Equal Access to Justice Commission publishes a guide for attorneys and judges who want to use cy pres funds and other court awards to support access to justice in our state. Click here to download the guide.

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Legal Aid of North Carolina is a statewide, nonprofit law firm that provides free legal services in civil matters to low-income people in order to ensure equal access to justice and to remove legal barriers to economic opportunity. Learn more at legalaidnc.org and follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Check out our YouTube channel for free legal education videos.

Media Contact: Sean Driscoll, Director of Public Relations, Legal Aid NC, 919-856-2132, seand@legalaidnc.or