|
Typically, we get to choose our pro bono projects. Other times, pro bono projects have a way of finding us (like that call from federal court assigning a prisoner's case). At Parsons Behle
& Latimer, we recently helped a Tibetan family by doing an unusual pro bono project that didn't come about in either of these ways. Here's what happened.
The project evolved
from an auto accidentÉa very sad one. Larry Stevens and I were asked to meet the victim at LDS Hospital. She was a Tibetan woman who had been injured in a one-car rollover and would never
walk again. Before the accident, she and her husband each worked two jobs to provide for their seven children. Now, she couldn't work at all and her husband needed to drop one of his two
jobs to care for his wife. It was impressive to us how much courage the family showed in facing this adversity.
Paradoxically, personal tragedies like this can be the plaintiff
attorney's bread and butter. Not so here, because coverages and collectibility were so small when compared with the damages. Third-party auto liability coverage was only $50,000. There
was no chance of getting personal assets from the driver. There were no UIM coverages. There was no health insurance. And, unfortunately, this was the only member of the family with no
safety net of Medicaid or Social Security benefits.
As attorneys, we felt fairly helpless, maybe useless. We dealt with that by adopting Plan A: (1) agree to work for this client
for the maximum reasonable fee, (2) apply all injury proceeds to neutralize the family's medical debt to the extent possible, (3) guide them into bankruptcy as a last resort, and
(4)somewhere down the road, give our fee back to the family after steering them through this minefield of new debt.
One of our first tasks was the thankless one of negotiating
medical liens. We proposed a work-out where each provider took a pro rata distribution (18 cents on the dollar) from the very limited injury fund. Most agreed and some didn't. We paid in
full those who didn't. Then we approached the largest single lienholder LDS Hospital (IHC) to consider what to do next.
In a memorable telephone call with one of IHC's financial
officers (our lienholder "adversary"), we thought it prudent to disclose the law firm's plan to give its fee back to the family. Big pause from the other end of the phone, then:
"You're lawyers so why would you do that?" IHC's officer then answered his own question by suggesting maybe IHC could do likewise. Together, we and IHC launched Plan B. We
approached the remaining lienholders and asked them to place their pro rata recoveries in a joint fund that would help the family. With a little persistence, pretty soon all of the
family's medical debt was extinguished, and we still had a fund of nearly $48,000 from the total injury proceeds of $53,000.
The best part came next...and the credit goes
elsewhere. We were called by the Director of a local non-profit organization called Community Development Corporation (CDC). He explained that a Tibetan family had applied for
home-ownership assistance, that CDC wanted to help, but that the family fell short of its minimum qualification requirements. He said the family had listed our law firm as a reference,
and asked what was that about.
At this point, we had to take into account IHC and others in the medical community who had agreed to forgive payment of medical expenses to do
something useful for the family. With IHC's permission, we told CDC they could have the entire fund if they could "commit" to get the family into a house of their own. Our tax
attorney pointed out that in making any 501(c)(3) donation to CDC, we could not "instruct" them what to do with the money. Perhaps out of character for lawyers, we basically
decided to put our faith in CDC. This was the beginning of Plan C.
In a leap of faith of its own, CDC partnered with University of Utah's School of Architecture to let its students
design and build a home for the family. Land was acquired from Salt Lake City Corporation. Local contractors volunteered time and materials. Squatters Brew Pub provided hundreds of
volunteer hours for landscaping. By Spring of 2003 the family moved in to a new (wheelchair accessible) home of their own.
This was a pro bono project that cut across professional fields, involving many people who in the ordinary course might not ever work together. Nearly 100 individuals and businesses ended up participating in the project. On behalf of Parsons Behle & Latimer, Larry Stevens and I wish to thank our primary "partners" on the project who were IHC, CDC, Salt Lake City Corporation, the University of Utah's School of Architecture and Squatters Brew Pub. Also, it was paralegal Ann Jessen who handled most of the hard details of negotiating liens and administering funds.
|
