Army veteran Roni Freund suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder tied to her military service and asked for support from the Department of Veterans Affairs. Marvin Matthewson needed help with daily living as he struggled with disabilities connected to his military service.
When the VA declined to pay disability benefits, both filed appeals within the time frame allowed by law.
Then, for years, nothing happened.
A class-action lawsuit claims that their fate — like that of tens of thousands of other veterans claiming disability — was determined by a glitch on a government computer. Their appeals were ultimately dismissed not because they missed a deadline, but because errors by an aging VA computer system made it appear they did.
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Now, a proposed settlement agreement in the class-action suit could give more than 90,000 veterans and their surviving family members a second chance.
Judges on U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims in Washington heard arguments about the proposed settlement on Thursday. The judges acknowledged the long wait that many veterans have experienced.
“We appreciate the collective efforts of the parties — this case has been around a long time — working together to come up to solve a problem that would have been very difficult for this court to solve was great,” Chief Judge Michael AllenAlan said. “We will in due course — and as quickly as possible — enter an order following the hearing today.”
If approved, the settlement would require the VA to process 28,258 appeals of benefit denials by hand, rather than relying on technology. The agency would have to notify another 64,599 by letter that they can ask the VA to review their cases again.
The settlement could at least partly make up for the errors, which date as far back as 1990, said Claire Hillan Sosa, a senior disability lawyer with North Carolina-based Deuterman Law Group, where she works with veterans with disabilities.
“A veteran on Social Security with debts, a run-down house, creditors breathing down their necks, chronic debilitating pain and coping on a daily basis with the emotional and psychological effects of military service should not have to also contend with VA shooing them away and ignoring their claims for decades,” Sosa told Straight Arrow.
“My clients have more important things to focus on than whether they completed their appeal form properly, or what a confusing VA letter is asking for, or whether VA actually received and established their appeals,” she said. “They contend with complicated healthcare-access obstacles, managing progressive disabilities, and most just want and deserve to spend time with family. A long-overdue grant of benefits like this makes all of that easier.”
Some veterans could receive decades’ worth of benefits from the government — as much as $1 million or more.
Thursday’s hearing is important, “so that veterans have the opportunity to be heard and receive the due process that is only fair,” James Fausone, an attorney with Legal Help with Veterans, another firm working on the case, told Straight Arrow. “Computers should not be denying claims.”
Old tech
At the center of the lawsuit is a piece of technology called the Veterans Appeals Control and Locator System, which the VA used to track appeals of benefit denials. The software automatically closed appeals when it determined veterans had missed a deadline for seeking redress.
The problem, the lawsuit alleges, is that tens of thousands of cases were automatically closed — even though they were filed on time — and the veterans weren’t even told their appeals were no longer pending. Many likely assumed they were still in the queue, waiting for a ruling.
“Some veterans have been waiting decades for VA to respond to an appeal that VA silently closed,” Sosa said. “For those veterans, it’s easy to give up or assume that they’re not entitled to benefits. But really VA hasn’t even looked at their appeals.”
The VA has not publicly explained how the computer glitch occurred or why it continued for decades.
“VA does not comment on pending litigation,” Shaneka Barefield, a public affairs specialist at the agency, told Straight Arrow.
What happens next
The proposed settlement, which the VA agreed to, would not automatically dish out disability benefits to all of the veterans. The intent is to determine whether each appeal was wrongly closed. In such cases, veterans will have the opportunity to resume their appeals.
For a veteran whose decades-old claim is finally approved, Sosa said, “the compensation can be life-changing.”
“It’s impossible to tell how much money may end up coming out of this settlement and whether appropriations would need to be adjusted,” Sosa said.
The VA may have to increase staffing on its appeals board to catch up on old cases, Sosa said, especially as the agency reviews those cases by hand.
Veterans who have waited for answers to their pleas may have to keep waiting.
“If the settlement is approved, we can probably expect some implementation snags, long timelines, and a lot of confusion,” Sosa said. “This is a large undertaking for VA, and historically notification letters about big changes in law or procedure have been confusing, causing anxiety and misunderstandings about veterans’ rights. And implementation within VA does not always match what we expect the law to look like in practice.”
Some veterans will never know how their appeals turned out.
Matthewson, one of the lead plaintiffs in the class-action suit, died in 2020; Freund, another lead plaintiff, died in 2022.
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