ARTICLES
Fall 2006
Dear Friends:
Since our summer newsletter, our successful representation of injured clients has continued. We settled a case for almost $16,000.00 for an employee of a local hospital who injured his back while lifting a patient. We also won the maximum amounts available under all applicable insurance policies (a total of $50,000.00) for a young lady who was seriously injured in an automobile accident. We also won several other automobile accident cases involving lesser amounts, having defended the folks injured in those car wrecks.
Likewise, Immigration Attorney Isabel Siedband, won a huge and emotional victory in what we are told is the first successful case of its type in our region in almost a decade when she successfully defended a young man from El Salvador the United States government was trying to deport. After being turned down by other attorneys who told him he would be forced to leave the U.S., this young boy from El Salvador came to our office and while the process was sure to be long and hard it was worth a chance to save him from being deported. The young man had been a witness to several violent attacks in El Salvador by a very powerful gang, and feared for his own life. At the age of sixteen (16), he fled El Salvador because of the threats to his life made by the gang responsible for the attacks. He made the long journey to the U.S. by himself to be with his uncle in St. Louis, where it was safe. Mrs. Siedband was able to arrange to have the uncle recognized by the Courts as the young man´s legal guardian, and then registered him for school. Mrs. Siedband petitioned before the judge so that the young boy could receive permanent residency as a Special Juvenile. If the young man had been deported to El Salvador, the gang responsible for the attacks likely would have found him and killed him. We are extremely pleased with the outcome of this young man´s case, as is our client, who recently turned eighteen (18) years of age, is now in his third year of high school, and has a bright future ahead of him, free from the violence and threats to his life with which he had to live constantly in his home country.
The International Law Firms (www.ilflaw.com), of which our Firm is a proud member, will celebrate its Regional Meeting of the Americas in San José, Costa Rica in early December 2006, and will hold its next World Meeting in Washington, D.C. in May 2007. International Law Firms is an international cooperative organization consisting of highly respected lawyers and law firms with affiliates in 70 cities and 40 countries world-wide. Attorney Hein will represent Missouri and the United States at the Conferences. Our membership in this organization opens the doors to a network of colleagues throughout the world for our clients with legal needs outside the U.S.
Finally, this year, as in years past, our Firm´s Office Manager, Mrs. Yvonne Aviles, will be organizing a coat drive for donations to those in need in the winter months. We invite you to bring to our offices extra coats, scarves, hats, gloves, overcoats, etc. so that we may donate them in an organized fashion.
Our Firm is one of the few, if not the only, fully bilingual, full service law firms in the State of Missouri, and was founded in May, 2003. Mr. Hein earned his law degree from Saint Louis University School of Law in 1994. He also received his undergraduate degree in History, cum laude, from Saint Louis University in 1991. Mr. Hein was born and raised in St. Louis, and graduated from the St. Louis Priory High School. While in law school, Mr. Hein studied at Madrid´s Centro de Estudios Universitarios at the Colegio de San Pablo, and served as a law clerk to one of the leading law firms in Europe, J. & B. Cremades & Associates, also in Madrid. He is a member of the Federal District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, the Eighth Circuit Federal Court of Appeals, the Supreme Court of Missouri and the United States Supreme Court. Our Firm´s Isabel J. Siedband (neé Fernández) heads up our Firm´s Immigration Department. She is the former interim head attorney for the Catholic Immigration Law Project (CILP), a non-profit legal service for low-income individuals who require immigration legal assistance. Mrs. Siedband earned her law degree (Licenciatura) from the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (Spain). Mrs. Siedband thereafter received her LL.M. degree (Master of Laws) from Washington University in St. Louis. She is a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the Federal District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, and the Supreme Court of Missouri. A St. Louis native and alumna of Nerinx High School, Mrs. Siedband grew up speaking French, Spanish, and English as her mother was from Cherbourg, France and her father was from Madrid, Spain. She has American, Spanish and French citizenship. As a daughter of immigrants, Mrs. Siedband is much attuned to the needs of the immigrant community and provides an invaluable service to our Firm´s diverse and international clients. While the Firm has always prided itself on being a full service, bilingual law firm (Spanish/English), Mrs. Siedband has opened our doors even wider to include French-speaking clients. Please feel free to call us for all of your legal and immigration needs.