Housing & Consumer Law Clinic

The majority of the Housing Clinic’s clients are now Latino. This semester, for the first time ever, two bilingual students, Leonel Vasquez and Victor Urbaez, are able to assist with interpreting.

Nicole Blancato successfully represented her Latino client in a successful jury trial. By order of the sitting judge, her supervising attorney Professor Ed Allen could not assist her by directly participating in any part of the full four-day trial against two experienced trial attorneys. The jury awarded Ms. Blancato’s client a substantial rent refund for the landlord’s failure to provide hot water. An unforgettable highlight for Ms. Blancato was her post-verdict meeting with jury members who shared with her the many things they liked about her presentation.

As a consequence of Ms. Blancato’s favorable verdict, both Chesseley Robinson and Chris Brown settled similar jury trials on the day of trial, each settlement more generous than its predecessor. Earlene Rosenberg and Stanley Myers plan to begin a jury trial this Fall, in the strongest of these companion cases.

In the Spring semester, litigating an administrative case involving rat and drug dealer infestation, Earlene Rosenberg broke all housing clinic records for extended cross examination. She examined a series of witnesses over the span of six to eight separate hearings and elicited decisive admissions from a key opposing witness. During the next watch in summer clinic, Judson Powell learned about the pitfalls of researching administrative decisions, but nevertheless wrote a proposed administrative decision and opposition of more than fifty pages, which requested damages of well over $100,000 for his beleaguered clients in Southeast.

Jude Iweanoge and Chris Brown pleased their civil procedure professor by writing perhaps the most indispensable motion in the "civ pro" arsenal, one for discovery sanctions, which added several hundred dollars to the School of Law’s litigation fund. They also learned how to pin down an elusive opponent in oral depositions.

Chesseley Robinson, representing a disparate array of cases and clients, was the Clinic’s utility player, and became the judgment enforcer. We are still waiting to see dollars extracted from defendants, "but progress has been made." Mr. Robinson also had a substantial ex parte proof trial after a default, while defending his client against a series of motions, initially to dismiss the case and then to vacate his substantial judgment.