The Fourteenth Amendment, 1868
“Nor shall any State … deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
Those words don’t enforce themselves. People marched to make them mean something, and they still mean only as much as someone is willing to stand up and say in a courtroom. When a police department, an employer, a landlord or a lender acts as if they don’t apply to you, that someone is us.
Josephine Haskins
Founding partnerWendell Tillery
Partner
Standing
Before a court hears you, it asks where you stand
Lawyers call it standing: the right to bring a case at all. A court wants to know that you were actually harmed, that the harm came from the people you’re suing, and that a judgment could do something about it. It sounds like a technicality. It’s the first ground every case has to stand on.
Most people who call us aren’t sure they have it. They were stopped, or fired, or turned away at a door, or hounded over a debt they don’t owe, and the institution on the other side has already told them they have no case. Sometimes that’s true. Often it isn’t.
You don’t need to know whether you have a case. Bring us what happened, and we’ll tell you plainly where you stand.
So our first meeting is about footing. What happened, in order. Who did it, and who they answer to. What the record shows, and what it’s missing. And how much time is left on the clock.
The clock
Standing doesn’t wait
Every claim has a filing deadline, and some are short. These are the federal ones people miss most often.
180 days
Job discriminationTo file most charges with the EEOC
300 days
With a state agencyWhere a state or local agency enforces the same law
12 months
Debt collectorsTo sue under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act
24 months
Credit reportsFrom discovering an error, under the Fair Credit Reporting Act
Deadlines turn on the facts, and a claim against a city or county can need written notice much sooner. This is general information, not legal advice.
The ground we cover
Four kinds of cases, one question underneath
Each starts with an institution that had power over you and used it wrongly. We take a small number of cases so each one gets two lawyers.
Excessive force, false arrest, unlawful searches, and injuries or neglect in a jail.
Being fired, passed over, harassed, refused housing or turned away because of who you are.
Buildings, websites, schools, jails and employers that won’t make room for a disability.
Collectors who break the rules, credit reports that won’t get fixed, and loans built to fail.
Ground recovered
What a case can change
Sample matters, to show the range. Some end in money; others end in a ramp, a rewritten policy or a corrected record.
$85,000
Force at a traffic stop
Sample matter: a driver tased after asking why he was stopped. Settled before trial.
$40,000
Pregnancy discrimination
Sample matter: back pay for a warehouse worker let go the week she told her manager.
Entrance rebuilt
Disability access
Sample matter: a step-free entrance and a written access policy at a public library branch.
Record corrected
Credit report error
Sample matter: three bureaus deleted accounts an identity thief opened, plus $12,000.
Sample matters for illustration. Every case is different, and past results don’t predict the outcome of yours. Amounts shown are before attorney’s fees and case costs.
Ground level
Every case happens somewhere
A sidewalk, a loading dock, a front step, a lender’s lobby. Before we write a word, we go and stand where it happened.
Tell us where you stand
Call, or write a few lines about what happened. A lawyer, not a call center, reads it and gets back to you, usually within a business day.
Most of our cases are on contingency: no attorney’s fee unless we recover money for you. You may still owe court costs and case expenses, and we put how those work in writing before you sign anything.