There’s some interesting legal wrangling going on over at Pisgah Legal Services, and this time Pisgah Legal is smack dab in the middle of the debate.
Pisgah Legal is a nonprofit that primarily offers legal help to indigent people. Now it’s got legal problems of its own.
There’s going to be a get-together soon of Ashvegas folk who support Pisgah Legal. Check back here or at Scrutiny Hooligans for updates.
In a nutshell, the federal government is suing Pisgah Legal to take possession of an historic house in Montford that serves as offices for Pisgah Legal. We need to follow this case closely because it will affect how Pisgah Legal continues to operate.
Legal Services Corp. brought suit against Pisgah Legal in March on a technicality. Legal Services said that because it helped Pisgah Legal buy its property, it should now retain ownership because Pisgah Legal went independent a few years ago.
Legal Services said Pisgah signed a contract that stipulated that it would give up its property should the nonprofit entity called Legal Services of North Carolina cease to be a grantee of Legal Services Corp. That entity did in fact cease to exist when Pisgah Legal in 1998 decided to give up $250,000 in funding from Legal Services and go on its own.
Pisgah says that the contract it signed with Legal was signed under pressure (“improper duress” in legalese) and is therefore invalid. The pressure was this: if Pisgah didn’t sign at the time, it would have been forced to give up money is was using to help poor people with legal services.
The legal fight aside, there’s a lot of local sentiment tied up in the old Gudger House. In 1978, it was the first house purchased by the Preservation Society of Asheville. It’s quite beautiful. A lot of sweat-equity work went into rehabbing the place. It would be a shame to see Pisgah Legal lose it’s home.
Here’s the newspaper story, first reported in the local newspaper.
What is the Legal Services Corp.? From its Web site:
The Legal Services Corporation is a private, non-profit corporation established by Congress to seek to ensure equal access to justice under the law for all Americans by providing civil legal assistance to those who otherwise would be unable to afford it. It was created in 1974 with bipartisan congressional sponsorship and the support of the Nixon administration, and is funded through congressional appropriation.
LSC is headed by an 11-member Board of Directors appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. By law, the Board is bipartisan: no more than six members may be of the same political party. LSC does not provide legal services directly. Rather, it provides grants to independent local programs selected through a system of competition. In 2005, LSC funds 140 local programs.