Judge Rules For Disabled Veterans, Slams Bureacrats

Judge blasts bureaucrats, reinstates benefits for wounded combat veteran 
McClatchy
Michael Doyle September 15, 2015

Minney enlisted in the Navy in 1985, serving both in active duty and in the reserves. He also worked as a firefighter and civilian paramedic in Ohio. He was wounded at the Haditha Dam while attached to the Marines as a field corpsman. The attack came late in the afternoon of April 18.

Navy corpsman Glenn Minney badly wounded in Iraq
Judge says federal benefits were ‘extinguished on a technicality’
Office of Personnel Management bureaucrats sharply criticized in opinion

A former Navy corpsman badly wounded in Iraq will have his federal benefits restored, following a judge’s ruling that repeatedly blasts bureaucrats for their rigidity.

In a remarkably sharp-edged opinion, U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon ordered the Office of Personnel Management to restore benefits to 21-year Navy veteran Glenn Minney. Minney was left nearly blind following a mortar attack at the Haditha Dam in April 2005.

When Minney retired from the Navy and federal service and started working for the Blinded Veterans Association, federal officials cut his government benefits because of his private salary. Minney said he wasn’t adequately informed that his disability payments were at risk; the letter sent to him, for instance, was not in Braille.

Leon called the move a “profound injustice committed by the federal bureaucracy against a blinded veteran.”

In his 18-page decision, Leon granted Minney’s request for a preliminary injunction and directed the OPM to reinstate Minney’s disability payments under the Federal Employee Retirement System.

“Indeed, it is difficult to imagine a situation more extraordinary, or an individual more deserving, of such relief,” Leon wrote.
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