Is Ballard's David Pittinsky on the wrong side of history?

Cosmic themes typically aren't the domain of commercial litigators such as David Pittinsky, who practices with Ballard Spahr in Center City. They focus on nitty-gritty factual and legal issues for clients seeking an edge in business disputes.

Yet the question emerges from a legal dispute that has its roots in the Aug. 9, 2014, police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and the catastrophic riots that ensued.

In November, Pittinsky was hired by a small group of predominantly African American municipalities near St. Louis to challenge Missouri's principal reform measure after Brown's slaying: a law sharply reducing the amount of money the towns could use from traffic fines and other offenses to fund municipal budgets.

Towns had been funding up to 30 percent of their budgets with that revenue, and there was evidence that Ferguson police were targeting drivers, many of them African American, simply to bolster their budget. The practice exacerbated racial tensions and likely added to the unrest after Brown's slaying. Pittinsky's clients say they never engaged in the practice and were unfairly targeted in the aftermath of Ferguson.

For towns in St. Louis County, the law reduced the portion of municipal budgets that can be funded by traffic citations and other fines to 12.5 percent; all other municipalities in Missouri, including St. Louis, which is not part of the county, could pay up to 20 percent of municipal operating costs with such revenue.

Pittinsky and his clients sued, and on March 28 a state trial-court judge found the law unconstitutional. No one doubts that there were abuses in Ferguson, Pittinsky said. But if the 20 percent remedy is good for the rest of the state, it should as a matter of fairness be good for towns within St. Louis County, he argued.

"They never would have gotten it through the legislature if all the municipalities had been restricted to 12.5 percent," said Pittinsky, who has been pounding the boards as a commercial litigator for 45 years.

Pittinsky has a thriving litigation practice and has argued cases all over the country. Over the years, his clients have included Frank Sinatra, Don Henley of the Eagles, and Jerry Blavat, the disk jockey.

He won the St. Louis engagement through pro bono work for the National Conference of Black Mayors. A current client, Patrick Green, mayor of Normandy, Mo., got to know Pittinsky from that engagement and asked whether he would help the towns overturn the Ferguson legislation.

A year ago, after finding that Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson had committed no crime in the shooting of Brown, the U.S. Justice Department issued a series of devastating findings on police and municipal court practices in Ferguson.

The police in Ferguson were less focused on promoting public safety than they were on generating revenue, the department said. Police were repeatedly exhorted, it said, to increase "productivity" by ticketing local residents, mostly African American, to better fill local coffers.

The municipal court system came off no better. The Justice Department said that it, too, worked mainly as a means of revenue generation, not a dispenser of justice.

"The court primarily uses its judicial authority as the means to compel the payment of fines and fees that advance the city's financial interests," the department said.

While much of the attention was focused on Ferguson, other municipal courts and police departments in St. Louis County were also criticized for heavy-handed policing tactics, use of traffic enforcement and fines to fund local governments, and rampant conflicts of interest. That is why the reform legislation targeted not just Ferguson, but surrounding towns, as well.

The Justice Department report was so fact laden that it's easy to conclude enormous injustices were done. So doesn't that leave Pittinsky fighting a losing battle with the grand sweep of history? He doesn't dispute that there were abuses in Ferguson. But he argues that there was no evidence his clients were doing the same thing.

To take away a big chunk of their revenue would force police layoffs and other cutbacks, he says. If it is good policy to limit revenue from traffic violations and other offenses to 20 percent of municipal budgets for towns outside St. Louis County, then it follows that it is good policy for towns within the county, as well, he says.

Soon, Pittinsky will get a chance to test the sustainability of his argument. The state has announced that it will appeal the trial-court decision, and the case is headed to the Missouri Supreme Court.

cmondics@phillynews.com

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