Local attorney recognized for economic justice work

ELYRIA — Philip Althouse has always had a sympathy for the underdog, he said on a winter afternoon in his Elyria office. Surrounded by towering house plants and memorabilia from his work in Central and South America, he recounted the path that led him to his Elyria office and his years spent in public service law. From his undergraduate studies at the University of Wisconsin during the waning years of the Vietnam War to his current work at the Legal Aid Society of Greater Cleveland, where he focuses on consumer protection cases, it has been a steadfast undercurrent in his personal and professional life. Late last month, it earned him the C. Lyonel Jones Lifetime Achievement Award from the Legal Aid Society — an honor bestowed by the nonprofit to its full-time employees in recognition of their commitment to the organization's work. "I get thank-you cards, thank-you emails from people, and I really want to say that those are more valuable than any awards or recognition I get," he said. "The most joy I get from lawyering is what I get from when a client says 'Thanks for your hard work.'" The award is named for the nonprofit's late executive director, C. Lyonel Jones, who died in 2006. Jones led the organization for nearly 40 years. Althouse, who moved to Lorain from North Collinwood in 2023, has worked for Legal Aid for the past 18 years. But legal work was not his first field of study. When attending the University of Wisconsin in the early 1970s, Althouse studied education with plans to become a social studies teacher. While there he was surrounded by the flurry of anti-war demonstrations and the showcase trial of several men in the Sterling Hall bombing in 1970. The bombing was a protest to the Vietnam War and the Army Mathematics Research Center on campus. Three years after the destruction, Althouse was working for one of the two student newspapers, "The Daily Cardinal," to cover the trial. A year later, he covered the federal trial of eight former Ohio National Guardsmen charged in the 1970 Kent State University shootings. "I was exposed to not just the media, but more lawyers and all these civil rights issues," he said. "Those things helped to heavily influence my decision all the way to become a lawyer — but not before I got an undergraduate degree in education." Before setting his sights on law school, Althouse was a part-time teacher in Milwaukee and a member of the union. There, he met Cesar Chavez and Delores Huerta, co-founders of what would become the United Farm Workers union. "It gave me a sense about, again, advocating for the underdog, of civil rights, human rights and so on," he said. In 1977, he was the lead plaintiff in a rent control case out of Madison that made it to the Milwaukee Supreme Court. The issue focused on a referendum that sought a fair rent ordinance. While the matter received the required number of signatures to appear on the local ballot, the city council removed it, sparking the legal battle. The state Supreme Court ultimately sided with Althouse's group and ordered the council to place the issue on the ballot. When he could not get full-time employment as a teacher in America's dairyland, he moved to Cleveland. Briefly following in his parents' footsteps, he obtained a nursing license to work in local hospitals while attending Cleveland State University's Marshall College of Law to avoid accruing student debt. "Nobody believed that I could ever do it," he said of attending law school at night while working as a nurse. "But I managed to pull it off." He remembered telling an attorney interviewing him for the bar exam in the early 1990s that he wanted to work in public interest law — he did not want to take a corporate job or personal injury suits, despite the larger payouts those positions can come with, he said. Instead of a high-paying corporate job, Althouse started his own private practice and served as a guardian ad litem in Cuyahoga County. He kept up the private practice, focusing on the same grassroots, underdog work, until the Great Recession forced him to look for a steadier paycheck in the nonprofit sector. Focusing on his consumer protection work, he highlighted his role in litigating for a woman caught in a debt settlement scheme that had ties to the real "Wolf of Wall Street." While Jordan Belfort would go on to become infamous for a stock exchange scheme that toppled in the late 1990s and inspire a film adaptation starring Leonardo DiCaprio, a protege's stepson, Ryan Sasson, would go into the debt settlement business. Federal prosecutors alleged Sasson's Buffalo-based Strategic Financial Solutions was a predatory company, using a nationwide network of accomplice law firms to exploit low-income clients for thousands of dollars in fees. Althouse represented an elderly woman reportedly preyed upon by Sasson's Buffalo-based Strategic Financial Solutions. The Cleveland Heights woman had credit card debt and saw an ad online for settlement help, Althouse explained. She called the 800-number and was referred to an alleged law firm to help negotiate a settlement. The woman ultimately paid thousands of dollars and ended up in other legal trouble because so much was being siphoned from her accounts every month to negotiate a debt settlement that never came. In 2023, Althouse settled with the law firm involved in the Cleveland Heights woman's case. In early 2024 federal regulators sued Strategic Financial Solutions on civil fraud charges. That litigation is ongoing. Althouse has also delved into foreclosures, fraud, and other economic justice issues during his life in the Rust Belt, from outside Erie, Pennsylvania, to Cleveland and now in Lorain. He has found himself surrounded by individuals scraping by in hard-hit economies and the unscrupulous businesses that have tried to take advantage of them with foreclosures, repossessions and credit card debt scams. It is that mix of scammers and their potential victims that creates a need for attorneys to handle economic justice cases, Althouse said. Cases can be expensive for private to take on pro bono or contingent on settlements, meaning those victims come to Legal Aid for help — and Althouse hoped more attorneys with the local bar association would volunteer their time with the nonprofit. "There's just no end to the drama and misery caused by people and businesses that want to rip others off, take advantage of them for money," Althouse said. When not in the courtroom or office, Althouse can be found at home with his two cats, Luna and Ebony. He also plays the charango and ronroco, string instruments popular in portions of South America. He travels frequently and has served as an international election observer in Central and South America. He also is a member of numerous human rights organizations working to advance social justice causes. Contact Carissa Woytach at (440) 329-7245 or cwoytach@chroniclet.com.