In preparing, formulating and filing a Federal Disability Retirement application under FERS or CSRS, brevity and succinctness should be the guiding rule. Often, over-explaining and overstating a particular issue, while intending to be helpful and fully descriptive, can result in greater confusion and muddling of the issues.
This is found not only in the Applicant’s Statement of Disability, but also in an Agency’s responsive completion of forms — both the Supervisor’s Statement as well as the Agency’s efforts for Reassignment and Accommodation. Previously, much has been written concerning (for example) the Agency’s attempt to explain how the Federal or Postal employee was “accommodated” in various ways.
Such explanations, while legally untenable precisely because the efforts engaged in did not in fact constitute an accommodation as the term is defined in Federal Disability Retirement laws, nevertheless confuse the issue with the Office of Personnel Management because (A) they often provide an appearance of having accommodated the Federal or Postal employee and (B) the Claims Representative at the Office of Personnel Management himself/herself neither understands the laws governing accommodation, nor applies it properly.
The same is often true in a long narrative of the Applicant’s Statement of Disability — where causation, harassment, the history of the medical condition, the problems at the agency, the history of how one’s work could not be performed, collateral legal forums filed with, etc. are all extensively discussed.
Remember that an answer to a question should always be guided by the question itself. Don’t create your own question and answer the question you composed. Rather, re-read the question, and answer only the question asked.
Sincerely,
Robert R. McGill, Esquire
Filed under: Theory and Practice: Tips and Strategies for a Successful Application | Tagged: accepting opm disability clients all across america, accommodation of federal employees, answering only the questions being asked fers disability claim, blogs owcp and opm disability issues, civil service eeoc and accommodation issues, CSRS disability retirement federal attorney, dangers about a voluminous fers disability package, discerning important from irrelevant medical issues in your opm disability claim, distractions that peripheral issues can cause to your federal disability retirement application, federal disability law blog, fers disability and form filling application, FERS disability retirement, filling opm disability retirement forms, irrelevant issues in federal employee disability law, light duty in the Postal Service, OPM disability retirement, postal disability retirement blog, postal service disability retirement, postal service employee light duty forms, relevance over quantity on disability medical documentation, rewriting your applicant statements in the opm disability application, too much information in the applicant's statement of disability, USPS disability retirement, what information to send to the opm with regard to medical claim, when the injured federal worker gives too much information in the disability form, when the supervisors write too much information in the fers claim, when there is too much information on your opm disability packet | Leave a comment »