[Missouri-l] Blind Pension update

[Chip Hailey]

Hello listers,

Here's an update on the Blind Pension status conference.
Deborah Greider, John Ammann, and Amy Sanders recently conferred, by order of the Honorable Patricia Joyce, with Dr. Jim LePage, the Court-appointed Special Master, and Mark Long of the Attorney General's Office, and Mark Gutchen, Chief Counsel for the Department of Social Services.  Thereafter, they had a conference with Judge Joyce.
 

Dr. LePage has been diligently working with figures provided by State records to determine the entire amount of underpayment to the class of blind citizens entitled to Blind Pension Fund payments.  He is working to determine what the level of pension payment at present ought to be.  He is trying to develop a data base that will identify each individual who at any time from 1992 through the present has been on the roll of the blind so that individually-identified damages can be ascertained.

 

On September 8, Judge Joyce ordered the parties to meet on October 1 to work with Dr. LePage and to identify those figures on which they can agree, those on which they cannot agree, and to give Dr. LePage their arguments for their relative positions.  Dr. LePage will continue to develop relevant figures and to make recommendations which he will ultimately convey to Judge Joyce.  Final determinations with respect to figures will be made by the Court.  Tentative figures developed by the Special Master 

 

Issues yet to be addressed remain.  These include prejudgment interest, attorneys' fees, the handling of damages that relate to  now-deceased class members, the handling of damages that relate to  former class members whose whereabouts are now unknown, the mechanisms for notice, the content of notice, and the claims process.

 

For some time the attorneys for the State have suggested that they might file another appeal with respect to the statute of limitations and the accounting so that the State will not have to pay the full measure of the damages it owes the class members.  The attorneys for the State have been saying this since last December.  They have filed nothing yet, but this does not mean that they might not do so.  Our attorneys will take appropriate action on our behalf and on behalf of the blind citizens of Missouri to protect our interests if the State files further pleadings, an appeal, or a writ to

the court of appeals.

 



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