From: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

NACBA’s February Member of the Month, Irwin Trauss, has been an impassioned champion for the rights of low income clients throughout his 31-year career. And along the way, he has gathered some fascinating life experiences.

For the past 10 years, Irwin has worked for Philadelphia Legal Assistance (PLA), providing free legal services to low income Philadelphians. Supervisor of PLA’s Consumer Housing Unit, Irwin works with PLA’s sister organization, Community Legal Services (CLS), to provide legal services to an eligible low income population of approximately 400,000. The Consumer Housing Unit focuses primarily on representing low income homeowners faced with the loss of their homes, usually through mortgage foreclosure.  A significant percentage are also victims of lenders who fail to service mortgages in accordance with HUD regulations and who force homeowners into foreclosure, despite the alternatives to foreclosure that they are required – but fail - to pursue.  Irwin notes that the existence of the foreclosure crisis is not as apparent now as it was in the 1980s because the explosion in foreclosures is disproportionately affecting the lowest income segment of homeowners and is not spread evenly through society.

For the twenty years preceding his time at PLA, Irwin worked for Community Legal Services in Philadelphia, where he co-managed the Law Center Northeast (and was for a time also the chief of the law center’s consumer housing unit).  It was during this time at CLS that Irwin met Henry Sommer, whom Irwin describes as his friend and mentor.  “Even before the Bankruptcy Code came into effect in 1978, Henry realized the potential the new law held for aiding our low income clients in their efforts to retain their homes.   Inspired by Henry’s vision, our unit and all of the consumer housing lawyers at CLS worked to help shape, through litigation, what was then a new law so that it would be construed favorably towards debtors, and homeowners in particular, by the Third Circuit and the courts in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.”

NACBA members will be familiar with the Irwin’s many litigation successes on behalf of bankruptcy debtors.  In the Third Circuit, he was involved directly as counsel who briefed and argued the case, as the direct supervisor of the named counsel or of amicus, or as a consultant on the brief or the amicus brief, in a series of cases that firmly established in the Circuit a homeowners’s right to strip down a secured debt to the value of the security in chapter 7 and chapter 13 cases.  In re Lewis, 875 F2d 53 (3rd Cir 1989)(argued); Gaglia v First Federal Savings and Loan Asoc. 889 F2d 1304(1989) (supervised amicus), Wilson v Commonwealth Mortgage Company, 895 F. 2d 123(3rd Cir. 1990) (supervised record counsel); In re Hammond v. Commonwealth Mortgage Corporation of America, (consulted on brief) and most recently, In re Scarborough, 461 F.3d 406(3rd Cir 2006)(argued). Scarbrorough is a case in which Irwin, together with NACBA members Scott Waterman (Media, PA) and Kenneth E. West (Drexel Hill, PA) represented NACBA as Amicus.  Irwin notes that although some of their earlier successes in the Third Circuit were later scaled back by the Supreme Court in cases such as Dewsnup, which overruled Gaglia, and Nobleman, which partially overruled Wilson, they succeeded in significantly affecting the jurisprudence of the Circuit, which effect continues despite the recent changes in the law.
 
Irwin also prevailed in the case of Stendardo v FNMA, 991 F.2d 1089 (3rd Cir. 1993), which limited a mortgagee’s ability to collect from a debtor in a bankruptcy contract rate interest as well as reimbursement for taxes and insurance premiums paid accrued after a judgment in foreclosure had been entered in state court.   This decision has also made it significantly easier for many low income homeowners in the circuit to prevent the loss of their homes in chapter 13 cases.

Irwin has great fondness for NACBA:  “The work done by the members and especially the leadership of NACBA is awe inspiring.  Truly a David in a constant battle with not just one, but dozens if not hundreds of Goliaths.  Miraculously, this David has won battle after battle, and now that winds of change may be blowing through Congress, may ultimately win the war (by undoing many of the most onerous aspects of the so-called bankruptcy reforms) for some of the most vulnerable in our society.  I can’t heap enough praise on the work you have all done and continue to do.”

Irwin’s personal history is as fascinating as his professional bio.  Irwin is a first-generation American.  His mother, who survived the Warsaw Ghetto and internment in concentration camps with two of her 7 sisters, and his father, who survived two years in Siberia as a prisoner of War, immigrated to Philadelphia, where he was born.  Irwin feels that the experience of his relatives in concentration camps and during the war has made him especially sensitive to the ease with which those who have power can abuse that power and the need for vigilant and committed advocates who act on behalf of the least powerful in society.

Irwin is a product of the Philadelphia public schools and of Temple University, from which he graduated Magna Cum Laude with a B.A. in Math.  He was one of the founding members of Temple’s Honors program, which provided him the opportunity to work at and manage the Legal Staff of the North Philadelphia Tenant Union, first as an intern and later for pay.  As an undergraduate he represented low income tenants, handled administrative hearings, and wrote his first appellate brief.  While at the Tenant Union, Irwin’s desire to become a lawyer, particularly to represent the underrepresented, became cemented.   (“The moment of decision actually came while I was watching the play One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.  All I could think about was how much McMurphy needed a lawyer.”)

At Georgetown Law School (J.D. 1976), Irwin took advantage of as the school’s great clinical opportunities.  He spent most of his last year representing clients in the Criminal Justice Clinic and handling his first jury trial (cut short by a mistrial early in the case, but after jeopardy attached, resulting in an acquittal).  Even today Irwin is most proud of a case that was referred to the Clinic by a particularly conscientious judge after the client refused to follow his court-appointed lawyer’s advice to plead guilty.   The case against Irwin’s client was dropped by the prosecutors after he prevailed on a motion to exclude the government’s main evidence.  For Irwin, the case was a cautionary tale about an attorney’s obligation to represent clients zealously. 

Irwin was at Georgetown Law during the Watergate hearings and President Nixon’s resignation.  He saw Archibald Cox argue before Jude John Scirica  and took Criminal Procedure from Charles Ruff (at the time of the Special Prosecutors’ Office investigation of the the Watergate cover-up and later famous for his defense of Bill Clinton in the impeachment hearings).

Now for the colorful stories:

1. “There is no space to tell my most colorful tale, which is the story of how my partners and I resurrected and restored a beautiful 38 unit apartment building built in 1912 and designed by a well known Philadelphia Architect,  Horace Trumbaur, located next door to my house.  As the result of three years of ownership by a couple of crooks, the property - once an asset to the neighborhood - had become a crack house occupied almost entirely by drug dealers, drug users, and squatters with no place else to live.   Over the course of two years we rehabilitated the property and restored it to much of its former glory.  We did so without forcibly evicting a single tenant (though we did have a couple of people arrested), by hiring many of the squatters to help us to rehabilitate the building, including a convicted murderer, who was quite a nice guy if you didn’t get him angry, and by helping one fellow, who with his family had been down on his luck, learn a trade and buy a house for himself and his family.  Along the way there were assorted knife threats, gun threats and confrontations between me, supported by the residents of the building who appreciated our efforts to turn the building into a decent place to live, and those who wanted to keep it from changing.  This was one of the most gratifying aspects of the adventure, reminiscent of old Westerns in which the townsfolk came to the aid of the lone lawman outnumbered and outgunned by the bad guys.  I am happy to report the building is now (and has been or the past 14 years) a peaceful, normal wonderful building inhabited by a diverse group of good people who share an appreciation for the building and the community it houses and who, I am also glad to say, seem happy to pay rent.”

• In the not too distant past, Irwin was arrested for civil disobedience.   As he tells it, about 5 years ago two of his children spearheaded a demonstration to thwart the city’s efforts to deconstruct Love Park, a world-renowned skate board venue.  Irwin went along to watch and to provide support. “I was minding my own business when I noticed the police were amassing around a small group of kids, including my children, who were sitting in the park apparently refusing to leave.  I went to the spot and asked the sergeant what was going on and to voice my opinion that the kids had a right to assemble in what was a public place.  I had a surreal conversation in which the policeman, who first asked sarcastically, ‘Who are you are you - their lawyer?’ then insisted that the public park was private property. Realizing the stupidity of what he had just said, he retracted the statement, became agitated, demanded to know if I was going to leave the park with the kids and, before I could answer, abruptly arrested me along with the kids.   The case was eventually thrown out by a judge who recognized the First Amendment aspects of the case.  But it made a good story for me and my kids.  What better activity for family bonding than being arrested together while exercising our constitutionally-protected right to assemble and to speak – for a just cause?