Postal & Federal Disability Retirement: Sufficiency

Sufficiency is the area of opinion and dispute and reaches just beyond the more certain standard of necessity.  X may be necessary , but is it sufficient?

In a basketball game, it may be necessary to play defense, but is it sufficient?  For, if you prevent the opposing team from scoring, but your own team fails to score any points, you may have satisfied one necessary aspect of the game but simultaneously have failed to sufficiently satisfy another, integral aspect — that of offensive scoring of points.

Similarly, in a legal case, while you may meet the necessary formal requirements to win a case, the question remains open as to the sufficiency of the evidence to persuade a jury as to the size of a compensatory award, or whether it was persuasive enough to cast sufficient doubt in the jury’s mind.

Necessity thus becomes the minimal satisfaction whereas sufficiency is the battleground where leeway is given as to whether the quality or quantity satisfies the extent beyond the minimum criteria met.

In a Federal Disability Retirement case under the FERS system, this is the area where the U.S. Office of Personnel Management will focus upon in denying a FERS Disability Retirement case.  They will make such generalized statements as, “While we do not dispute the existence of your health conditions, there was insufficient documentation to establish that you are disabled from performing the essential elements of your position.”

How does one rebut OPM’s argument from insufficiency?  Is it a qualitative or quantitative insufficiency?

That is the question and area of law where it becomes an art form more than a science, and only experience and years of knowledge can discern the underlying requirement needed.  There is no one “right” answer.  Sometimes, faxing to OPM a voluminous amount of treatment records is the only way to meet the “sufficiency” test, but more often than not, it is the quality of a medical report prepared by the treating doctor which is the only means of satisfying the sufficiency criteria.

As with all things in life, areas of dispute rarely have a single answer, precisely because the very nature of disputation involves issues that reach just beyond the point of certitude.

Thus, in responding to the question of sufficiency, you may want to contact a FERS Disability Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and who has the experience and background in addressing the issues of sufficiency beyond mere necessity.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill
Lawyer exclusively representing Federal and Postal employees to secure their Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

 

Medical Retirement from the U.S. Postal Service and other Federal Agencies: The State of Solitude

Having a medical condition necessarily results in a state of solitude.  While others can empathize, no one else can fully comprehend the totality of the experiential turmoil and trauma, the emotional, physical and psychological toll upon the diminished personhood and the daily struggle endured.  It is a solitary state of existence, and all the more so when individuals, agencies, friends, family and acquaintances fail to take the time to understand.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who must, on top of the medical condition itself and the residual impact and consequential symptomatologies which pervade and cling, like dust mites slowly feeding upon the progressive trail of human deterioration, continue to contend with the exacerbating and exasperating reaction of one’s own agency, supervisors, managers and coworkers who engage in daily pettifoggery of irritating acts of hostility and unpleasantness, the dual contention of dealing with the medical condition while concurrently responding to adverse actions by the agency or the Postal Service, only serves to exponentially increase the tension and turmoil.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset is not (and should not be) an issue of surrendering to the slings and arrows of the agency or the U.S. Postal Service; rather, it is a recognition and acknowledgement as to the greater priorities of one’s life:  to continue with an agency or organization that clearly no longer wants or needs you, and thereby complicate properly and adequately attending to the medical condition itself; or to affirmatively choose to forego the unnecessary stresses of an increasingly hostile work environment, and to take the required steps to prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, eligibility for medical retirement through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

There again, such a decision must be made within the contextual state of solitude; for, in the end, it is only the person experiencing the trauma of the medical condition who understands the need to lessen the solicitous state of existence, in order to escape the solitude of a soul’s anguish.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire