The Hunger Lawyers

Ron Pollack's small New York City law firm consistently wins the biggest money judgments in the nation. Yet Pollack and the four other young lawyers (average age: 31) who work with him do not handle the traditionally lucrative kinds of cases--personal-injury litigation, treble-damage civil antitrust suits, defending giant corporate clients. Ron Pollack is into food for the poor. For the past six years, his Food Research and Action Center has successfully fought Administration efforts to cut back federal spending on food for those who would otherwise have to do without. In the process, Pollack and FRAC (as the center is acronymously known) have forced the Government to free hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of congressionally approved food benefits that the White House had sought to eliminate by Executive fiat. Says Pollack: "Our function is to use the law to feed people."

He uses it with devastating success. Of 150 suits filed in the past half-dozen years, FRAC has won all but four--and three of those losses generated legislative changes in favor of FRAC's causes, while the last may yet be won on appeal. The past few months have been especially rewarding for Pollack and his team. In May FRAC got a judicial order directing the Department of Health, Education and Welfare to stop blocking $37.5 million in food benefits for 63,000 elderly citizens. Then came a $125 million victory over the Department of Agriculture, which had been holding back congressionally appropriated food funds for pregnant women, nursing mothers, and young children. The topper was last month's stunning blow to the Ford Administration's bid to eliminate $1.2 billion in food stamps. Ruling that the proposed action was probably illegal, Federal Judge John Lewis Smith Jr. blocked the food-stamp cut until the case is finally resolved. Said Smith: "Hunger and deprivation might result, which could hardly be cured through any retroactive relief."

Bad Policy. The New York City-born attorney, now 32, was a student civil rights activist who went to Mississippi in the mid-'60s, where he "saw in the starkest terms people who were extraordinarily hungry and needed government assistance." Only five months out of law school (New York University, class of '68), Pollack filed 26 suits in a single day against foot dragging on food programs by 26 states and the Agriculture Department. "I was arrogant," he now concedes. But, proceeding with careful research and thorough preparation, he won 25 of the 26. These legal triumphs helped him get a $250,000 federal grant in 1970 to start FRAC, which is now supported by a host of religious and foundation sources. Pollack's work has won him respect from supporters and opponents alike. Justice Department Attorney Mack Norton, who has faced him in court and lost, says, "With Ron, we have to work a little harder." Adds Marshall Matz, general counsel of the Senate Nutrition Committee, "He argues congressional intent better than anyone else I've seen."

That is almost always Pollack's key argument--that the intention of the lawmakers is being subverted or ignored by Executive actions. But the young lawyer wishes that the adversary relationship were not necessary. The Government's problem, he explained to TIME Correspondent Don Sider, "is constant pressure to minimize spending. The areas that are most vulnerable are the ones with the weakest political constituencies." Thus in recent years, despite congressional appropriations to help the poor, the Administration has often withheld the money, prompting FRAC lawsuits on behalf of the deprived beneficiaries. Says Pollack: "It's almost an institutionalized thing and it's not a good way to make public policy."

Even with a friendlier White House attitude, Pollack would still have plenty of work just making sure that his victories stuck. Two months after winning one lawsuit, he called the appropriate federal administrator, who admitted with shock that he had never done anything about the court order because he had never been told about it.

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