A federal judge in Pennsylvania has ordered counsel in an underlying civil rights suit to go door to door issuing a formal written apology to community members in South Philadelphia after devising a "scream test" which involved playing a looped recording of a woman screaming for an hour in a residential area.

In a Thursday order, U.S. District Judge John F. Murphy for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania ordered the plaintiff's counsel with Neufeld Scheck Brustin Hoffmann & Freudenberger in New York and Kairys, Rudovsky, Messing, Feinberg and Lin in Philadelphia to deliver a written apology to residents of the South Philadelphia neighborhood that was exposed to the sounds of a screaming woman during the early hours of the morning last month, without warning. According to Murphy, the counsel disregarded the community members and fell short of ethical standards, issuing the sanctions order requiring them to apology.