FERS Disability: Enhancing the Chances for Success

Every missed opportunity lessens the chances for a successful outcome, and when you are dealing with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management under the FERS system, and specifically when attempting to obtain a Federal Disability Retirement from them, you must take every opportunity to reinforce and take advantage of each chance given.

At every turn when OPM requests further information, such communication provides an opportunity to cite a legal precedent in characterizing the strength of your position or to reiterate the legal basis as to why your case merits further consideration beyond the “run of the mill” cases.

Can you argue the Bruner Presumption even if you have not been separated from Federal Service?  Can you make an argument by analogy?  Can you argue the “inconsistency” argument as propounded in Henderson v, OPM, or the 4-part test in Bracey?

By making such arguments at every opportunity presented, you enhance your chances for successfully being approved for Federal Disability Retirement benefits.  For, in the end, all roads in a Federal Disability Retirement case lead to an appeal with an Administrative Judge at the U.S, Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), and OPM is fully aware of this plain fact.

Because OPM knows that successive denials of a FERS Disability Retirement case will ultimately lead to an appeal to the MSPB, citing relevant case laws at every opportunity presented will enhance your chance for success.

Contact a disability lawyer who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and begin to enhance your chances for success in obtaining an approval for your FERS Disability Retirement application.

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.

 

FERS Medical Retirement: The Better Fallacy

We can always wait for better; that tomorrow will bring a resolution to the problem, or maybe even the day after.  In doing so, we look for the signs of better; of a subtle improvement here, an incalculable, immeasurable but justifying quantification there; and, of course, procrastination becomes the favored cousin in the private, insular world of the better fallacy.

Can an objective criteria be applied?  Will Popper’s Falsification Test bring out an objective assessment, or will we continue to delay and delay where the better fallacy can convolute our thoughts and delay the necessary judgment for making a decision?

The truth is, the wisdom of the ages betrays the better, and the fallacy we are fooled by always denies the historical truth: Things always get worse.  But look at history, you are wont to argue — of centuries of toil and despair, of Leviathan’s description of solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short; but of modernity, where so many diseases have been vanquished and poverty incomparably mitigated by contrast.  Perhaps.  But the Better Fallacy still prevails.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal Service workers who suffer from a medical condition where the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, never wait for “better” to become fulfilled, lest the better fails to achieve what the replacement should be considered — preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application under FERS, through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

For, like perfection’s harm, the wait for better will often lead to a bitter result, where the dreams of better are merely a mirage better left to nighttime’s despair of terrifying nightmares.

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.

 

OPM Disability Retirement under FERS: The Salve of Talk

We used to recognize the distinction between “talk” and “action”, but modernity has blurred the difference through social media outlets which purport to elevate words as “action-words”.  It is enough in this day and age to merely state that “X is Y”, even if there has been no actual transformation of X becoming Y other than a declarative sentence stating it as a fact.

Some philosophers have, of course, posited that certain words do, indeed, constitute “actions”; but for the most part, the history of linguistic malleability has resisted, and the distinction still holds between words and actions.  Thus, to say that “X was run over by a truck and lay in the hospital” is quite different from the fact of such a description; and anyone who has experienced pain can attest to the differentiation posed.

Talk in recent times, of course, has become a kind of salve.  There is therapy where once there was penitential confession; and families in general believe that “talking about things” is a good thing.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, talk only gets you so far.

Preparation, formulating and filing of a Federal Disability Retirement application under FERS, through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, is the step beyond the salve of talk, and to take that first “action-step”, you may want to contact an OPM Disability Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law.

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.

 

FERS Disability Retirement Application: Denials

They come in various forms; of self-denials representing a sacrifice in order to allow loved ones to reap the benefits; of denials meant to avoid the ugliness of reality; or of denials which prevent a person from entering a premises, advancing in a career or progressing in an endeavor.  Of whatever form or content, they leave the denied applicant a sense of disappointment, a temporary state of suspension and often a profound feeling of uncertainty.

Does one “give up” when a denial occurs?  Or, does one find an alternate route, a way to rebut and with a reenergized sense of purpose?

To be denied is to be defeated for a time; to be defeated is to give up entirely; but to avoid the finality of defeat, one must regroup and counterattack, in whatever form that may take.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition and who have been forced to file for FERS Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management by necessity of an unwanted medical condition — a denial from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is not the proverbial “end of the road”.  Rather, it is simply the beginning of the fight.  Who said that life’s pathways are easy?

Although OPM often makes it sound “as if” you never stood a chance, that your case was flawed to begin with or that there was never any validity to the claims you have made, that is simply their opinion on the matter.  What matters is whether your case has merit, and the merit of a case depends upon the laws governing FERS Disability Retirement Law.

Consult with an attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and don’t let a denial automatically lead to a defeat; for, there is a reason why Federal Disability Retirement allows for various stages of appeals — precisely because a denial by OPM is not the end of the matter, but merely a beginning to the fight which must ensue.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement: The gathering clouds

We don’t have people saying such pithy or inane things, anymore, and the death of the metaphor is the fault of Google.  And, of course, the Weather Channel and the Smart Phone apps that give us the updated information concerning that which we can see for ourselves.

Who ever talks that way, anymore?  “The dark clouds are gathering” – a metaphor for trouble brewing, problems arising or bad people getting together to engage in no good deeds.  To which everyone whips out their Smart Phones and checks the most updated forecast, using the Weather Channel app that everyone has already downloaded onto their phones, and in unison respond: “No it’s not; today is only partly sunny, then tomorrow there is a 20% chance of rain and the temperature is…”  “No, no, no…that is not what I meant by saying that the dark clouds are gathering.  What I mean is…” And you are met with blank stares by the horde of millennials who speak a foreign language, fail to understand the generation before the Internet or Smart Phones, and don’t even own a landline.  What, is that even possible?

Time was once upon a millennium, when farmers felt the bones ache from the gathering storm; that one could sniff the winds of changed directions; and noting the behavior of rabbits, birds and the mutterings of crows in the bushes, the gathering clouds would be discerned as patterns of nature’s calling.  Technology has its place and uses, but in the end, it dulls the instincts that have survived and helped human beings to last for want of realization of a civilization lost in the silent graveyards of forgotten memories.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of the Federal or Postal job duties, the “gathering clouds” is often hinted by the behavior of coworkers, supervisors, and other agency officials; of the tone and tenor of attitudes abounding; and though the adverse action or initiation of a PIP may appear to come as a surprise, you knew it was coming long before, just as you knew that you needed to start the process of the filing a Federal Disability Retirement application long before the time made it into an urgency, or even an emergency.

The gather clouds, no matter how much we may try to stamp out the underlying instinct felt, is still the same the world around; we just have a better way of suppressing it than in countries less technologically sophisticated.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire