Legal Aid and Defender Association, Inc. Attorneys Complete Remodeling Project for Elderly Detroit Widow After Contractor Disappears

October 2004 (Newstream) -- How many lawyers does it take to remodel a porch? Three -- in the case of an elderly Detroit widow defrauded by a contractor. And not only did her three lawyers finish the remodeling job abandoned by the contractor on their own time, they also paid for the building materials needed to finish the job out of their own pockets.

According to Sylvia Williams, 87, a widow of 25 years, she paid a Detroit remodeling contractor to enclose the concrete-slab front porch of her home on Monica Street on the city's west side. After installing walls, windows and aluminum siding, he disappeared, leaving the interior unfinished.

"He just took advantage of a widow," Sylvia Williams said.

Unable to pay an attorney to go after the contractor, Williams turned to Legal Aid and Defender Association, Inc., a provider of legal services to low- and moderate-income people in metropolitan Detroit.

In order to handle some 15,000 legal matters annually, the staff attorneys at Legal Aid and Defender often get help from attorneys in private practice who donate their time pro bono, or free of charge, to assist the needy. Lynda Krupp, managing attorney of Legal Aid and Defender's Private Attorney Involvement unit, placed Williams's case with the Detroit Legal Service Clinic, a pro bono referral service run by the Detroit Metropolitan Bar Association and major law firms and offices of corporate counsel in the area. The clinic in turn assigned the case to Thomas Ziolkowski, a staff attorney for General Motors Corporation.

Ziolkowski works in the products liability section of GM's Office of General Counsel, where attorneys are encouraged to perform pro bono work. He enlisted two attorneys in private practice, Fred Fresard and Nicholas Even, at the Troy office of Bowman and Brooke LLP, a Minneapolis-based law firm.

The contractor had given Williams a letter acknowledging payment and promising to complete the work in a timely manner, the lawyers said. However, their search of state records revealed that the contractor had pulled a similar disappearing act with prior customers. Moreover, he had no known address, just a cell phone number. The lawyers called the number repeatedly without reaching him.

They sympathized with their client and wanted to help her but realized that even if eventually successful, pursuing the contractor through legal channels would be a time-consuming process. That's when they made their unusual decision: to break off the chase and complete the remodeling job themselves.

For two weekends, the three attorneys exchanged their law books and legal pads for the tools of the building trades to finish the interior of Williams' porch, installing drywall and paneling, and laying carpet. Fresard, whose father was a homebuilder, supervised the work. "We were just go-fers," Ziolkowski said of Even and himself.

Both Williams and the lawyers are pleased with the results. "I can't thank them enough," she said.

"It's great to see Mrs. Williams happy and enjoying the porch," Fresard said. "If we hadn't gone ahead and finished the job, we'd still be bogged down in litigation."

"We can't thank Tom, Fred and Nick enough, either," Krupp said. "They've given new meaning to the term pro bono."

Legal Aid and Defender, a nonprofit, charitable organization, is the largest provider of legal services to the indigent in Michigan and one of the largest in the United States. It provides civil legal services to eligible clients in Macomb, Oakland and Wayne counties in Michigan, and represents indigent criminal defendants in Wayne County courts, Michigan courts and the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan.

"We work with clients in a comprehensive manner, so that as we solve their legal

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