Berks County Bar Association The Berks Barrister Summer 2020 - 8

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"VIVA LA REVOLUTION!"
Continued from page 7

was to evict without notice-so much for procedural due process!
As part of "Viva la Revolution," an emergency petition was
filed in federal court, and it was assigned to Judge Troutman, who
met with the tenant's attorneys that Friday afternoon. The jurist
telephoned RHA's attorney, John H. Forry, at his home. Mrs.
Forry answered and said her husband was working in the garden.
Judge Troutman replied, "Please have him come to the phone."
Once Mr. Forry picked up the receiver, Judge Troutman said,
as Lou recalls, "The Reading Housing Authority is not complying
with the law. It has to stop. This tenant is not going anywhere.
There needs to be procedural due process."
After the attorneys met in conference the following week, the
grievance hearing procedure we have today was begun, serving as a
prelude to the filing of an eviction complaint with the magisterial
district judge.
Our current support enforcement procedure is also a direct
result of the "Viva la Revolution." As Lou relates in his Barrister
article: "When we began to practice, men who failed to pay their
child support payments were picked up on a warrant, brought
to the courthouse, and placed in lockup to be brought before a
judge either at 9:30 am or 1:30 pm. Our office would get a call
sometimes literally minutes before the hearing and be asked to
come to the courthouse to represent the defendant. We would
rush over, hold up court annoying both the presiding judge and
the remainder of the bar who had to wait while we argued why the
philanderer should not be imprisoned.
"We were able to convince the court that it would be more
efficient and cost effective to send out petitions directing the
defendant to appear in court and show cause why he shouldn't be
held in contempt."

Hippie in Charge
Meanwhile, J. Richard Gray
had arrived in Lancaster in 1972 to
become the new executive director of
Tri-County Legal Services. A 1969
graduate of Dickinson School of Law,
Rick had first practiced several years
with Neighborhood Legal Services in
Pittsburgh, but the Pottsville native was
anxious to return east. The future mayor
of Lancaster settled in.
Not appearing to be the managerial type-the Woodstock
alumnus sported a ponytail, wore cowboy boots and was frequently
seen on a Harley motorcycle-he was, nevertheless, the perfect
manager. Rick tells of his first trial, representing an African8 | Berks Barrister

American woman accused of beating her landlord with a golf club.
She said to Rick, "Where would a black woman come up with a
golf club?" After his cross-examination of the landlord, the judge
dismissed the case. The grateful client said to Rick, "You know a
new day has arrived when a hippie lawyer and a black woman can
beat a white guy."
A new day, indeed. Shortly after Rick
came to Lancaster, so did two future
Reading lawyers. Jim Rothstein showed
up in 1973, and Sharon Scullin, while a
law student at Villanova, was interning in
the Lancaster office during the summers
of 1974 and 1975 and then throughout
her third year of school. After meeting
and working together, the two fell in love
and married.

HUD Halted
Benefiting from Rick's forward thinking and always supportive
managerial style-"do what you have to do to correct the
problem"-Jim brought a class action against the Department of
Housing and Urban Development after becoming alarmed at the
number of evictions taking place, three times the usual rate. Upon
investigation, Jim had learned HUD was selling, nationwide, their
multi-unit subsidized housing properties. Slumlords were buying
them, raising the rents since controls were no longer in place,
and when tenants could not make the higher payments, eviction
actions were begun.
Jim and his office team filed in federal court seeking a
temporary restraining order. Law student Sharon came up with
the theory that, by eliminating all the rent controls, the housing
environment changed. Thus, the Department should have first
done an environmental impact study prior to selling the properties.
After a two-day trial before Chief Judge Fullam in Philadelphia,
he issued his decision, adopting Sharon's theory.
An injunction was issued ordering the evictions to stop,
returning the properties to HUD, and requiring HUD to return
the money back to the slumlords. It was cited as precedent by
legal aid attorneys across the country, whereupon, the whole HUD
sell-off program was undone.

Delinquents Increase in Number
Back in Reading, another Woodstock alumnus, Herbert
Karasin, joined the "delinquents" in December 1974, already
having had several years of legal services experience. After
graduating from Penn Law in 1968, Herb clerked one year for
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