Client Testimonial

Arthur Dion - The Work of Practitioner Sessa

Arthur Dion and his fellow residents of Newton, Massachusetts were fed up.

Newton, a town of roughly 60,000 residents, 11 decentralized shopping centers and tons of traffic was growing by leaps and bounds. So when the residents discovered that in 1995 a Stop & Shop was going to be built on an already congested retail street, without vision or input from local business owners and residents, they decided to take the matter into their own hands and defeat the proposal.

"This was not only about the Stop & Shop," says Dion, who along with his wife Diane was one of the more active participants in the neighborhood organizing effort. "The Stop & Shop is symptomatic of a larger challenge to quality of life issues and unplanned development in Newton and elsewhere that needs to be addressed," he explains.

The neighborhood group, Citizens Organized for Responsible Development, petitioned the city counsel and other city agencies to reject the Stop & Shop deal. They claimed that this particular street was already too congested, with about 35,000 vehicles traveling on it every day. The Stop & Shop would add 8,000 - 12,000 more cars to the thoroughfare each day, they sited.

But fighting a large Danish Corporation that owns the Stop & Shop chain of food stores is not easy, claims Dion. That is when Dion's wife sought out Peter Sessa, a Boston lawyer who often works with community organizations in order to help them organize around various efforts.

Sessa, throughout his legal career has pledged to help neighborhood groups and individuals whether they can afford high legal fees or not. He belongs to a Northeastern University School of Law practitioner network designed for solo and small law firm lawyers. The network's goal is to connect socially conscious, like-minded attorneys so they can be a resource to themselves as well as to low and middle income clients.

The practitioner networks, which were created at City University of New York School of Law, University of Maryland School of Law, and Northeastern University School of Law, are part of the Law School Consortium Project. The Project aims to increase access to justice by supporting law schools to expand their educational and institutional mission beyond graduation to include support and service to solo and small-firm practitioners who are committed to serving low and moderate-income individuals and communities.

Sessa, who has over 20 years of experience working with community groups, advised the Citizens Organized for Responsible Development. He helped them effectively organize and become a cohesive, powerful group. He suggested they make this a political fight and not a legal one and let the politicians take a costly case to the courts. "He told us we would be more effective as a citizens' group.  Our job was to convince the politicians to reject this proposal and we succeeded," says Dion. "We all greatly respected his judgement," he says.

Sessa, who believed in the issue, became not only a counselor but also a friend, claims Dion. "He was part of our group.  He was one of us," he says.

After Newton's politicians rejected the Stop & Shop, the Danish company, Royal Ahold, sued the town. The case went up through the state courts until it reached the Massachusetts Supreme Court, where the Citizens Organized for Responsible Development filed an amicus brief. After years of bitter political and legal battles, the Supreme Court upheld the town's decision to not build the Stop & Shop on Newton's busy street.

According to Dion, the group is grateful that Sessa joined their fight. "Sessa is one of the brightest and most articulate people we met through the organization," says Dion. "We found him persuasive all along and we listened to his advice. And we did win," he says.

Written by Victoria Rivkin, a freelance writerin New York City