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About us

admin — Tue, 28 Nov 2023 14:21:44 +0000

After 33 years, Popper & Yatvin closed its doors in December of 2020. Popper & Yatvin was a Philadelphia law firm established in 1988 by Alan Yatvin and Howard Popper. We concentrated our practice in criminal defense in state and federal courts, police misconduct litigation and representation of special education students. When reading the blog, be aware that words highlighted in blue are links to related documents or websites.

Alan Yatvin has joined the law firm of Weir Greenblatt Pierce LLP (WGP) as a partner, where he continues to be available to serve Popper & Yatvin’s clients. Alan chairs the firm’s Civil Rights and Special Education Practice Groups. WGP is a full-service law firm that handles a broad range of legal matters practically, effectively, and economically, for both businesses and individuals. The firm has offices in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and New York. Alan is based in WGP’s Philadelphia office, 1339 Chestnut Street, Suite 500, Philadelphia, PA 19107. He can be reached at (215) 665-8181, or through the WGP website.

Howard Popper retired from the practice of law. After nearly four decades as a trial attorney, Howard is spending time with family and his dogs and catching up on some long overdue travel.

Our blog will find a new home on WGP’s website, where Alan continues his observations on legal sundry on the WGP Blog. You can also find Alan on LinkedIn, where he posts his latest news.

We thank all the clients and colleagues who have supported us over the years and trusted us to care for their legal needs. We hope you will continue to reach out to Alan, so that he and WGP can assist you with all you legal needs.

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On the passing of Linda Brown: Remembering Brown v. Board of Education

Alan L. Yatvin — Tue, 27 Mar 2018 16:38:11 +0000

On Sunday, March 25, 2018, Linda Brown of Topeka, Kansas, passed away at age 75. Brown was an educational consultant, civil rights activist and public speaker. But to many she was also the face of a historic decision on desegregation in public education.

In 1950, then seven year old Linda Brown asked her father, Oliver, why she had to make a long walk across train tracks and a busy street to catch a bus to an elementary school across town, when the Sumner Elementary School, attended by her friends from the integrated neighborhood in which she lived, was just four blocks from her house. Oliver Brown promised his daughter he would try to change that. Topeka’s high schools and junior high schools were already integrated, but its elementary schools remained segregated. On the advice of the NAACP, he took her to Sumner to enroll, but they were turned away. Oliver Brown then agreed to be a plaintiff in a suit against the Topeka Board of Education. That suit led to a landmark decision from the United States Supreme Court outlawing so-called separate but equal discrimination in public education. By the time of the 2004 ruling, Linda Brown was enrolled in an integrated junior high school.¹

On the 50th anniversary of the Brown decision, I wrote an essay for Philadelphia’s newspaper serving the legal community, The Legal Intelligencer. On the occasion of Linda Brown’s passing, I am republishing that essay about the case her father brought to fulfill a promise to her.

May 17, 2004

Facts to Know, Tell On Landmark Case

By Alan L. Yatvin
Special to the Legal Intelligencer

The popular media are replete with articles, editorials and TV specials marking the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education and the end of the “separate but equal” doctrine that served to foster racial segregation in public education. However, I wanted to offer my colleagues a lawyer\’s take on the people and events surrounding that watershed decision. Hence, to commemorate the occasion, here are some facts you may not have known about Brown:

✦ Brown was the culmination of a long line of cases brought to challenge racial segregation in public education, dating to an 1849 case brought in Boston. In Kansas, alone, 11 such cases were brought between 1881 and 1949.

✦ Brown was the product of a campaign conceived by NAACP counsel Charles Hamilton Houston and advocated by his protege and successor Thurgood Marshall and Jack Greenberg, both of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. In 1948, the NAACP board of directors formally adopted Marshall’s plan by deciding to concentrate its efforts on an all-out attack on segregation in education. During the next three years, the NAACP commenced or joined the five cases that were ultimately consolidated under Brown.

✦ At oral argument in Brown, John W. Davis, co-counsel for the South Carolina appellees, quoted W.E.B. DuBois in support of the argument that it was more harmful to black children to thrust them into an integrated environment where white children, teachers and parents despised, resented, mocked, neglected, bulled and literally rendered life a living hell.”

✦ DuBois, a Harvard graduate, who famously wrote, “I was in Harvard but not of it,” was one of the founding members of the NAACP in 1909. He was the passionate editor-in-chief of the NAACP’s magazine, Crisis.

✦ Oliver Brown, the name plaintiff in Brown, was one of nearly 200 plaintiffs from four states and the District of Columbia, challenging “separate but equal” educational systems. The only case in which relief was granted the plaintiffs was Belton v. Gebhart, in the Delaware Court of Chancery. The young chancellor who ordered integration of the Delaware schools was Collins Seitz Sr., who went on to become a judge of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

✦ Brown was first argued in December 1952. In June 1953, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered reargument to be held in October at the start of the new term. Just before reargument, Chief Justice Fred Vinson died unexpectedly. Vinson was believed to have supported continuation of segregation under the “separate but equal” standard. Remarking on Vinson’s passing, Associate Justice Felix Frankfurter is reported to have quipped, “It’s the first indication I’ve had that there is a God.”

✦ President Eisenhower nominated Earl Warren to replace Vinson on Sept. 30. The court rescheduled argument for December. Warren, who was confirmed as chief justice by the Senate in March 1954, delivered the unanimous opinion of the court on May 17. Even though his Justice Department argued in support of desegregation in Brown, Eisenhower disliked Brown and failed to publicly endorse the decision. He felt it was a mistake to start with schools, rather than public accommodations.

✦ The original 1952 argument in the consolidated Brown cases commenced at 1:30 p. m. on Tuesday, Dec. 9, recessed overnight, and continued shortly after noon the following day. Marshall ended his rebuttal argument by stating: “But the rights of the minorities … have been protected by our Constitution, and the ultimate authority for determining that is this court. I think that is the real difference. As to whether or not I, as an individual, am being deprived of my right is not legislative, but judicial.”

✦ The Supreme Court severed Bolling v. Sharpe, the District of Columbia case, from the Brown cases, because the 14th Amendment was not applicable to the District of Columbia. On the same day the Supreme Court declared in Brown that “separate but equal” violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, it handed down a decision in Bolling, ruling that racial segregation in the District of Columbia public schools violated the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.

✦ Sociological evidence was presented in the lower courts to demonstrate that “separate but equal” had a devastating effect on African-American children. This evidence included research by Dr. Kenneth Clark, who showed black dolls and white dolls to African-American children and asked them to chose the good dolls. They chose the white dolls. Robert L. Carter, a U.S. Senior District Court Judge, who argued the Brown case with Marshall, was the principal advocate of including this sociological evidence. Eastern District of Pennsylvania Senior Judge Louis H. Pollak, who was part of the Brown team, argued against the inclusion of the sociological evidence, asserting that it was unnecessary.

✦ The Supreme Court cited the Clark research in support of its decision in Brown. In January of this year, Pollak, sitting with Carter on a forum at Howard University Law School, told Carter, “You were right and I was wrong.”

✦ Pollak was on all the Brown briefs, along with Philadelphian William T. Coleman Jr., Oliver Hill and Carter, Constance Baker Motley and Jack B. Weinstein, author of the definitive treatise on the Federal Rules of Evidence.

✦ On May 31, 1955, the Supreme Court handed down Brown II, which ordered desegregation with “all deliberate speed.” The court’s use of the term “all deliberate speed” is regarded as a catalyst for the student protests that launched the civil rights movement, because many Southern states took advantage of the vagueness of the order to thwart integration. Prince Edward County in Virginia, a defendant in one of the consolidated Brown cases, chose to close its public schools for five years rather than honor the Brown II order.

✦ One of the signatories to Brown II was Justice John Marshall Harlan II, who was nominated to the court in the year between Brown I and Brown II, upon the sudden death of Justice Robert Jackson. Harlan, who became known as the “Great Dissenter” of the Warren Court, was the grandson of Justice John Marshall Harlan. The first Justice Harlan, a Kentuckian and former slave owner, was named for John Marshall, the first chief justice of the Supreme Court. When he joined the Supreme Court in 1877, Harlan was the only law school graduate among the nine sitting justices. He was also the lone dissenter in the 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson. It was in Plessy that the Supreme Court established the “separate but equal” doctrine that became the constitutional basis for segregation.

✦ Harlan’s Plessy dissent argued that forced segregation stamped blacks with a badge of inferiority. This same line of argument became a decisive factor in Brown, where the Supreme Court expressly overruled Plessy. In his Plessy dissent, Harlan coined the phrase “Our Constitution is colorblind.” Southern District of New York Senior Judge Constance Baker Motley, an attorney with the NAACP legal team during Brown and the first African-American woman appointed to the federal bench, recalls that during the Brown fight, Thurgood Marshall picked himself up in low moments by reading aloud from Harlan’s Plessy dissent.

✦ In 1979, three young African-American attorneys in Topeka, Kan., petitioned the district court to reopen Brown to determine whether the school board had eliminated all vestiges of discrimination. That case, known as Brown III, resulted in the Topeka Public Schools building three magnet schools. [Linda Brown joined that suit as a plaintiff.]

✦ On Tuesday, May 11, 2004, one week before the 50th anniversary of the decision in Brown v. Board of Education, a state district court judge sitting in Topeka issued an order essentially closing the Kansas Public Schools for the coming school year, due to the failure of the Legislature to provide sufficient funds to ensure constitutionally adequate education to poor, disabled and minority children in Kansas. Brown v. Board of Education was one of the authorities cited by the court.

✦✦✦✦

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/03/26/597154953/linda-brown-who-was-at-center-of-brown-v-board-of-education-dies

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Sex-Shamed To Death: How Oklahoma Prosecutors Used Sex And Infidelity To Put A Woman On Death Row

PYBlog — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 19:50:05 +0000

Today we write to recommend an essay by our long-time friend and colleague, Marc Bookman. Marc is the co-director of the Atlantic Center for Capital Representation, a non-profit agency helping adults and juveniles facing severe punishments.

Marc’s essay, Sex-Shamed To Death: How Oklahoma Prosecutors Used Sex And Infidelity To Put A Woman On Death Row, was published on October 10, 2017, by IN JUSTICE TODAY, a publication of Harvard’s Fair Punishment Project.

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Traffic Pain in Philadelphia

Alan L. Yatvin — Wed, 16 Nov 2016 17:56:13 +0000

The hardest part of writing something I am pleased with, is accepting when I can’t get it published. Newspaper and magazine editors only have so much space and they have to triage. When the piece is geographically specific, the available outlets are few. Or maybe what I wrote was junk and I just don’t know it. For better or worse though, because I run a blog I can always self-publish. So before you read on, be forewarned: the following Philadelphia-centric piece has received multiple rejections. I think the message is still worthwhile. But then, I would, right?

It’s 5:30 on a mid-week afternoon, and I am driving north on 16th from Locust Street to JFK Boulevard in Center City Philadelphia. The distance is about seven blocks. The trip will take more than 15 minutes.

Crossing Walnut Street, the left lane – a no stopping zone that time of day – is blocked by two cars, one unattended, and one with a driver sending text messages. Just ahead is a driverless UPS van. What can brown do for me? Try using logistics to park legally!

Across Sansom Street are two unattended FedEx vans in no stopping lanes, one on the left, one on the right. Relax, its FedEx? Hardly.

At Chestnut, eastbound cars sit in the intersection. The light changes, horns honk, no one moves. Eventually the intersection clears and traffic moves forward, only to have a car stop in a no stopping zone in front of Two Liberty Place. Moving up the block, cars and delivery vans fleck the right and left no stopping lanes, funneling traffic from four lanes to two. On Market, a SEPTA bus picks up passengers, heaves hydraulically from its knees and pulls into the intersection on a yellow light. With traffic backed up all the way from City Hall, the bus, one of those double-long articulated jobs, straddles the intersection through two complete light cycles. The bus finally clears the intersection, but 16th north of Market, narrowed due to excavation in the right lane and a mail van in the no stopping zone on the left, is backed up with cars that turned left off Market. Gridlock again.

In the mid-80’s I got caught in an intersection approaching the Holland Tunnel. It was the middle of New York’s “Don’t Block the Box” campaign and the police were out in force. The ticket was hefty. The trauma and the lesson still linger. When signs went up in Philadelphia years later I thought: its about time. I was wrong. Unlike New York, there is zero enforcement. I confess on occasion I have misjudged the flow or been cut off by a lane-hopping jockey and been left straddling a cross-walk, shamefaced, or with my rear end hanging into the intersection. But usually I am that guy sitting at the green light before an empty intersection, waiting for an opening on the other side as horns honk furiously behind me.

At the next intersection JFK is backed up from 17th. Cars in the left lane on 16th are waiting to turn left. Going straight, I stay in the left center lane. Even though the two left lanes of 16th Street are clear across the intersection, we are not moving. Why? Because a cab in the center left lane is stopped waiting to turn left onto JFK – a common, irritation and illegal (75 Pa. Code § 3331(b)) occurrence at this corner. Then the westbound traffic surges into the intersection, creating a new gridlock. At last I reach Arch and turn onto the Parkway. As I make my way to the MLK Drive, I will encounter construction chaos, disregarded lane lines and “no turns” signs that are, like the Pirate Code, considered advisory. But that is another piece.

I have seen a lot in my trip down 16th Street, but what I have not seen is a single police officer trying to keep the intersections clear or enforcing moving violations. For a few days during the transit strike their were officers in the intersection, but they are gone and things are back to normal. Nor have there been any Philadelphia Parking Authority (PPA) enforcement officers issuing tickets to the cars and vans clogging the no stopping lanes. Likewise, there are no PPA tow trucks moving those illegally stopped/parked vehicles. Where are police and PPA officers? Shift change? Donuts? Done for the day?

According to TomTom, the maker of car GPS systems, traffic in Philadelphia adds 23% to travel time, when compared with the same trip made during free flow traffic. During evening rush hour in Philadelphia travel time is increased by 50% over free flow periods.

Pittsburgh Police Officer Vic Cianca in Flash Dance

Based on a survey of Instagram posts the Auto Insurance Center, found that people feel the greatest levels of road rage during the hours between 4 and 7 PM. I, for one, didn’t need the survey to tell me that. Philadelphia was ranked 18th among the cities experiencing the most road rage.

Driving at rush hour is never going to be easy or pleasant. But opening up what are supposed to be through lanes and unlocking intersections would go a long way to speeding the journey through Center City. It’s not going to happen voluntarily though. Unless no stopping zones are enforced by PPA officers giving tickets and Parking Authority tow trucks hauling away offenders, lanes will remain stoppered. Likewise police must be available to direct traffic and enforce the rules at the major intersections. Otherwise, unmindful drivers, 100 foot long buses and cab drivers making turns from center lanes are going to continue to create gridlock.

So, how ‘bout it Police Commissioner Ross and PPA Acting Director Tolson: won’t you help reduce our travel time and stress?

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NYT Publishes Yatvin Letter

PYBlog — Tue, 23 Feb 2016 20:37:12 +0000

The New York Times has published a letter from Alan L. Yatvin commenting on the need for training of police to recognize and respond to people with medical conditions affecting their mental health, in emotional distress or with mental health issues, in response to the February 14, 2016 article: When the Hospital Fires the Bullet. The letter appeared in the Times on-line on February 23rd and will appear in the print edition on the 24th.

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Yatvin gives Diabetes Safe at School Presentation

PYBlog — Mon, 06 Apr 2015 17:28:19 +0000

On March 28, 2015, Alan Yatvin presented at the Annual Conference of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, Living Well with Diabetes: Now and in the Future.

Alan’s session was entitled: Keeping Kids with Diabetes Safe at School. Attendees included parents, children with diabetes, healthcare providers, advocates and even a diabetes service dog in training.

During the one hour session, which included lively questioning by attendees, Alan discussed:

Federal laws that protect children with diabetes in school;
Safe at School tenets of the American Diabetes Association;
Status of state laws affecting student with diabetes in Pennsylvania and around the country;
Issues that children with diabetes face in school;
Nuts and bolts of writing an appropriate individualized plan for a student with diabetes;
Resources for parents and healthcare providers to insure that students with diabetes are able to fully and safely access all aspects of their school programs; and
How parents can get support and assistance to protect the rights of their children with diabetes.

A PDF of the PowerPoint slides, prepared by Crystal Crismond Jackson, Safe at School Director for the American Diabetes Association, is available here.

Alan L. Yatvin is a partner in the Philadelphia law firm of Popper & Yatvin, where his practice includes representation of students and parents in special education and disability matters. Alan is a member of the National Board of Directors of the American Diabetes Association (ADA), and immediate past ADA national chair of Legal Advocacy. Based in Alexandria, Virginia, the ADA is celebrating its 75th Anniversary as it pursues its mission to prevent and cure diabetes and to improve the lives of all people affected by diabetes.

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Yatvin profiled in The Philadelphia Lawyer

PYBlog — Tue, 18 Nov 2014 22:14:55 +0000

The Fall 2014 issue of The Philadelphia Lawyer, the quarterly magazine of the Philadelphia Bar Association, features an article on Popper & Yatvin partner Alan Yatvin.

INTERNATIONAL DEFENSE

By Richard G. Freeman

Our world – from Filbert Street courthouse to Market Street courthouse, perhaps interspersed with a bold junket to West Chester – is too small for Alan Yatvin. Somehow this protean practitioner has balanced his role as a partner in the firm of Popper & Yatvin with meaningful appearances as defense counsel in the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) at The Hague, representing defendants accused of crimes in the former Yugoslavia. For good measure Yatvin chairs the court’s Association of Defense Counsel Membership Committee. And last spring the globetrotting Yatvin was sworn in as a member of the Bar Association of the Kingdom of Cambodia, joining the list of international counsel at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Court of Cambodia (ECCC). Click here to read the full article.

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Yatvin on ethics panel in The Hague

PYBlog — Wed, 12 Nov 2014 17:46:16 +0000

On November 8, 2014, the Association of Defence Counsel Practising Before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ADC-ICTY) held an ethics training in The Hague, The Netherlands. Alan Yatvin was a member of the panel entitled: Ethical Considerations During Pre-Trial Proceedings. Alan is admitted to practice before the ICTY, the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (the consolidated residual court for the ICTY and the Rwanda Tribunal) and the Extraordinary Chambers in the Court of Cambodia (ECCC), also known as the Khmer Rouge Tribunal.

Program attendees included ADC-ICTY members, interns and staff, as well as defence team members from the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), staff of the ICTY/ICTR/MICT Registry, Prosecution and Chambers, and students from various universities around The Hague.

At the ADC’s General Assembly on November 9th, Alan was elected to his 5th term as chair of the ADC-ICTY Membership Committee.

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Popper and Yatvin – 21 years of highest peer ratings

PYBlog — Mon, 03 Nov 2014 16:32:10 +0000

For the 21st year in a row, Howard Popper and Alan Yatvin each received the highest possible rating in both legal ability and ethical standards from Martindale-Hubbel.

The Martindale-Hubbell® Peer Review Ratings™ are an objective indicator of a lawyer’s high ethical standards and professional ability, generated from evaluations of lawyers by other members of the bar and the judiciary.

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Care of Young Children With Diabetes in the Child Care Setting: A Position Statement of the American Diabetes Association

PYBlog — Wed, 24 Sep 2014 16:18:57 +0000

Popper & Yatvin partner Alan L. Yatvin was a member of the writing group for Care of Young Children With Diabetes in the Child Care Setting: A Position Statement of the American Diabetes Association, published September 23, 2014, in the journal Diabetes Care, October 2014 vol. 37 no. 10 2834-2842.((Diabetes Care is a journal intended to increase knowledge, stimulate research, and promote better management of people with diabetes.)) ((A position statement is an official American Diabetes Association (ADA) point of view or belief that contains clinical or research recommendations.

Position statements are issued on scientific or medical issues related to diabetes. They are published in ADA journals and other scientific/medical publications. ADA position statements are typically based on a systematic review or other review of published literature. Position statements undergo a formal review process. They are updated annually or as needed. Key ADA position statements: These are select position statements that represent official ADA opinion on topics not adequately covered in the Standards of Care but that are necessary to provide additional information on quality diabetes management. These position statements also undergo a formal review process.)) ²

The statement addresses legal protections for young children with diabetes and how they can be safely cared for by childcare providers with appropriate training, access to resources and a system of communication with parents and the child’s diabetes health care provider.

One of the ADA’s principal concerns is protecting the rights of children with diabetes to have equal educational opportunity, to remain free from discrimination based on diabetes, and to have access to a free appropriate public education, including the diabetes care services they need in order to remain safe at school. It is the ADA’s position that “[a]ppropriate diabetes care in the school and day care setting is necessary for the child’s immediate safety, long-term well-being, and optimal academic performance.”³ The ADA opposes policies and practices that discriminate against students with diabetes based on their disability.

Alan Yatvin has represented numerous families of students with diabetes who faced discrimination because of their medical condition. He served as the ADA\’s national chair of legal advocacy from 2010 – 2013.

Yatvin was previously a member of the writing group for the ADA’s 2011 Position Statement: Diabetes and Driving, an overview of licensing rules for people with diabetes, addressing the factors that impact driving for this population, and identifying general guidelines for assessing driver fitness and determining appropriate licensing restrictions.⁴

Position statements are issued on scientific or medical issues related to diabetes. They are published in ADA journals and other scientific/medical publications. ADA position statements are typically based on a systematic review or other review of published literature. Position statements undergo a formal review process. They are updated annually or as needed. Key ADA position statements: These are select position statements that represent official ADA opinion on topics not adequately covered in the Standards of Care but that are necessary to provide additional information on quality diabetes management. These position statements also undergo a formal review process.
The American Diabetes Association is a nationwide nonprofit voluntary health organization founded in 1940, and has over 485,000 general members, 15,000 health professional members, and 1,000,000 volunteers. The mission of the ADA is to prevent and cure diabetes and to improve the lives of all people affected by diabetes. As of 2011, there were 25.8 million Americans with diabetes. The ADA is the largest, most prominent nongovernmental organization that deals with the treatment and impact of diabetes. The ADA establishes and maintains the most authoritative and widely followed clinical practice recommendations, guidelines, and standards for the treatment of diabetes.
American Diabetes Ass’n, Position Statement, Diabetes Care in the School and Day Care Setting, 37 Diabetes Care S91-S96 (2014).
Diabetes Care January 2014 vol. 37 no. Supplement 1 S97-S103.

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