Pro Bono Innovators 2023 Honoree Selendy Gay Elsberg

In our 2023 issue of Pro Bono Innovators, Bloomberg Law honors Selendy Gay Elsberg for securing favorable terms for Sandy Hook school shooting victims’ families in the Remington debtors’ bankruptcy plan that allowed them to continue wrongful death litigation against the gun maker, leading to a $73 million settlement in February 2022. We also note the firm’s work helping to launch an international nonprofit that has evacuated and resettled at-risk girls and community members from Afghanistan following the Taliban’s takeover.

Your firm’s pro bono work included securing favorable terms for families in the Remington debtors’ bankruptcy plan, which included a mechanism to allow Sandy Hook school shooting victims’ families and other tort claimants to continue their wrongful death litigation efforts against the gun maker, which eventually led to record payout in February 2022. You are also being honored for your work evacuating 500 Afghan refugee girls from Kabul in 2022 after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. How did your firm strategize on how to approach these matters?

When Jennifer Selendy heard about the plight of hundreds of at-risk girls in Kabul, Afghanistan, after the Taliban takeover in 2021, she knew she wanted to help. Instead of seeking donations, she threw herself into a complex rescue effort. She got involved with the rescue via the Institute for Global Leadership at her alma mater Tufts University, where she was vice-chair of the institute’s board. Tufts alumnus Abuzar Royesh, whose father founded the Marefat High School, turned to institute members for help as Kabul fell to the Taliban.

The 30 Birds Foundation, led by a small, multi-national group of journalists, authors and graduate students, came together via Zoom and WhatsApp to get the girls out of Afghanistan. They initially focused on trying to fly the group out of Kabul, then attempted to charter a flight out of Mazar-i-Sharif. When those efforts proved unsuccessful, the team used their connections to help the girls and their chaperones secure permission to enter Pakistan in September 2021 via an overland route. In September and October of 2021, the first 250 of the evacuees arrived in Saskatoon, Canada. The remaining 250 -- after more than a year in Islamabad -- arrived in December 2022, reuniting the community and enabling 30 Birds to shift its focus to establishing the girls in their new home.

When Remington filed for bankruptcy for the second time in two years, the bankruptcy threatened to effectively cut off the Sandy Hook families’ ability to recover damages in their wrongful death claims in Connecticut by potentially extinguishing or otherwise radically diminishing their ability to build a case against Remington using its own records, as well as by protecting Remington’s assets from a judgment in favor of the families.

Our firm is known for its creativity in finding solutions to thorny litigation issues and has extensive experience litigating a wide variety of bankruptcy issues on behalf of all types of creditors, including those with unsecured claims. Partners Faith Gay, David Elsberg, and Joshua Margolin jumped into the ring to assist in the Bankruptcy Court fight to preserve assets and key evidence so that our clients’ Connecticut claims would not be compromised.

[The Selendy Gay Elsberg team for this matter was led by Faith Gay and Joshua Margolin, who took on a majority percentage of the work, along with co-counsel from Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder; Sparkman, Sheppard, and Morris.]

What were the most innovative aspects of two of your client matters in your view? And who took the lead on driving innovation with the work?

Our work to evacuate at-risk girls and their families from Afghanistan following the Taliban’s 2021 takeover charted new ground. A small, international group of journalists, authors, graduate students and lawyers – led by founding partner Jennifer Selendy – came together to bring the girls and community members to safety in Canada.

There was no playbook for our mission and no guarantee of success, but we were determined to help. Under Jennifer’s leadership, a global team of lawyers was assembled in 2022 – many of whom were female partners at other elite firms – to assist with the visa process on behalf of the girls and their families. It is historically rare for private firms to collaborate on a pro bono matter of this type, but doing so greatly magnified the results. We ultimately helped more than 500 people resettle safely in Canada, adjust to life in their new country, and pursue education in North America.

We worked with a multi-firm team to help the Sandy Hook families secure favorable terms in the Remington debtors’ bankruptcy plan, including a mechanism to allow the Sandy Hook families and other tort claimants to continue their litigation efforts against Remington. Our innovations were focused on ensuring that Remington’s assets would not be unavailable to secure a future judgment in the Connecticut case.

They were also focused on assuring that Remington documents would be useful as evidence in the Connecticut case and would be preserved despite the fact that the case was just getting off the ground (after all appeals were exhausted by Remington) and there was no judgment against Remington as of yet. During the hearing to confirm the plan, the bankruptcy court recognized the importance of the key changes sought by the families and directed the debtors to revise the plan to include them

Tell us more about the impact of the matters on the local, national, and/or global level.

The Taliban prohibits girls’ education past age 11, and many of the Marefat schoolgirls, who are members of the persecuted Hazara ethnic minority, feared being forced into marriage with Taliban fighters. Other girls from the school, including a group of singers and martial artists, had received death threats.

The successful rescue of girls and their families helped attract media attention and support from global leaders, including HRH King Charles, who supported the 30 Birds Foundation through his charitable trust and even met with some of the girls. The ongoing impact of rescuing these girls continues as they pursue education in their new country with enthusiasm.

One of the girls has already won a prestigious scholarship in Canada, and another had the best score on a national test of Canadian history. Their teachers have reported that their impact on their classmates is palpable—other students know that their new classmates risked their lives for education, and their story is an inspiration. And despite the challenges posed by Taliban rule, the organization also continues to help the girls still in Afghanistan pursue their education.

The goal in the Remington bankruptcy proceedings was to ensure that funds were available to pay any future judgment in the ongoing wrongful death litigation brought by the Sandy Hook families in Connecticut, which was handled by their counsel, Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder. Just as importantly, the goal was to preserve a key asset of Remington--the historical record of marketing Remington’s weapons.

Regardless of any particular recovery, including the important recovery by the Sandy Hook families, the preservation of Remington’s marketing materials and related documents preserved an important piece of the story for future litigation and for examination by policy analysts, the press, and historians as our government(s), gun owners, and gun manufacturers continue to grapple with assuring responsible gun ownership and safety for the American people.

Why do you think your team ultimately achieved successful results in these two matters?

From our inception, we have put public interest and pro bono work at the heart of our values, believing resolutely that we could be both high-achieving, leave-it-all-on-the-floor commercial litigators and fierce advocates on the issues that shape our society. We are dedicated to bringing the same hard-driving, best-in-class ethos to our pro bono cases as we are to our commercial clients. And we are proud of the fact that we can go to any court anywhere in the country and try any kind of case. We have proven that a firm can be tremendously successful by all the conventional metrics, but also, at the same time that the firm is doing well, it can do good for others.

Another innovation of our approach is that many of our high-stakes oral arguments are conducted by associates. In some instances, our associates were arguing against experienced partners from Big Law firms. As a litigation-focused firm, we pride ourselves on giving junior associates substantive opportunities to participate in trial work, and this is just one example of the tremendous results our associates have obtained for our clients.

What did you do to celebrate when these matters were resolved?

In the case of 30 Birds, the team was proud and joyful when the girls and their families arrived safely in Canada. On two occasions, Jennifer Selendy flew to Canada to greet and welcome them. This video captures the community’s mix of emotions upon finally reaching safety. It was published in December 2022, when the second group of girls and their families arrived from Islamabad. Afterward, 30 Birds went right back to work securing funding for housing, education, medical costs, and everyday needs. The organization’s mission continues unabated.

In Remington, we were cheering from the sidelines, and happy to play a unique role in the long climb to victory.

Responses provided by Jennifer Selendy for the 30 Birds project and Faith Gay for the Remington matter. They are co-founders of Selendy Gay Elsberg.