In 1993 alone, according to an activist lawyer, more than 3,000 people died as a result of unacceptable care in California nursing homes.
But the government avoided being sued by activist lawyers ClientEarth working with Clean Air London.
Ali is known primarily as an activist lawyer.
"We're a bunch of activist lawyers of color working for environmental justice issues."
She talks about her trial, about her career as an activist lawyer and about a personal politics that sounds instinctual rather than ideological.
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, an activist lawyer, recently ran unsuccessfully for Congress from Maryland.
Part of the work of the activist "barefoot lawyer" Chen Guangcheng also concerned excesses of this nature.
Liu Xiaoyuan, an activist lawyer, on 15 April was taken away by officers who identified themselves as being from Beijing's public security bureau.
This was partly because the people who impressed him most as he was growing up were all activist lawyers, and partly because of his rich uncle.
Scott Rafferty, a Democratic activist lawyer in California, said soldiers had contacted him to say they feared voting by fax.