OPM Disability Retirement for Federal and Postal Employees: Administrative v. Adversarial

That is often the line of argument:  Since it is an “administrative process”, it is not adversarial.  This presumes quite a bit — such as, the term “adversarial” is constrained to applying only in such cases where a trial, a courtroom, and witnesses exist.  But if that is the case, then doesn’t that occur in a Hearing before the Merit Systems Protection Board? But that, too, is an “Administrative Process.” 

Such an argument, of course, is often used by Human Resources personnel to attempt to dissuade Federal and Postal workers of the necessity of retaining an attorney to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS or CSRS.  Yet, further presumptions & assumptions would have to be made if one were to accept the argument that an “administrative process” is “non-adversarial”, such as:  the personnel who review and evaluate Federal Disability Retirement applications are “objective” and have no interest in approving or disapproving a case (this assumes that having or not having an interest in X makes the process “non-adversarial); or, that the Office of Personnel Management is merely applying the law in reviewing a Federal Disability Retirement application (this presumes that such application of the law is performed and accomplished correctly).  The concept of determining that a process is “administrative” does not exclude the reality that the same process is also “adversarial“; the two concepts are not mutually exclusive, and is not defined only within a universe where there are two or more contrary or opposing interests involved. 

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire