NCLEJ Senior Staff Attorney Claudia Wilner Finalist for Public Justice Trial Lawyer of the Year Award

NCLEJ Senior Staff Attorney Claudia Wilner has been recognized for her successful litigation ending a fraudulent debt collection scheme. Public Justice has named Claudia a finalist for their Trial Lawyer of the Year Award for her work in the landmark case, Sykes v. Mel S. Harris & Associates LLC. The federal class action litigation reached settlement last year, with defendants paying nearly $60 million to low-income people whose bank accounts were seized or wages garnished, and extinguishing more than $1 billion in alleged debt. As an additional component of the settlement, the New York State courts vacated nearly 200,000 fraudulently-obtained default judgments.

Public Justice presents its Trial Lawyer of the Year Award to the attorney(s) who made the greatest contribution to the public interest within the past year by trying or settling a precedent-setting, socially significant case.

Congratulations to Claudia and her co-counsel, Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady LLP, MFY Legal Services, Inc., and the New Economy Project.