Disability Retirement for Federal Government Employees: Being Persuasive

In preparing, formulating and filing a Federal Disability Retirement application under FERS or CSRS from the Office of Personnel Management, there are certain “advantages” which a Federal or Postal employee/applicant may already possess from the outset, without having filed a single piece of paper with the Office of Personnel Management.  

These advantages may include:  an agency action removing the Federal or Postal employee from Federal Service based upon one’s medical inability to perform one or more of the essential elements of one’s job; an Air Traffic Controller receiving a disqualification by the Flight Surgeon; an OWCP-accepted claim where a Second Opinion doctor writes a comprehensive report and answers definitively that the Federal or Postal employee has a permanent medical condition which will prevent him or her from ever returning to his or her former job; a Supervisor’s Statement which clearly delineates and describes the extent of the Federal or Postal employee’s medical condition based upon observation and agency-impact; and multiple other “advantages”.  However, an advantage fails to become so, and remains only in a state of potentiality, unless it is actualized by being utilized effectively.  By “effective utilization” is meant that, just as one can be persuasive only by persuading, so one can effectively utilize an inherent advantage in a Federal Disability Retirement application only by persuasively arguing that the particular agency action has a legal basis in which the action itself is legally persuasive.  

In other words, the proper legal citations which have been mandated previously by a Judge in another case, must be cited and referred to, in order to use it as an argumentation basis to the Office of Personnel Management.  One cannot persuade unless one engages in persuasive conduct — and that means that one must not go out blindly into the field and use a scythe as a hammer, but be able to recognize the tool for what it is, then to use it accordingly.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire