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VA FALSELY TELLS SENATOR THAT ATTORNEY NEVER

WORKED FOR AGENCY -- Court and agency records

show attorney was among the most senior

defending the VA against disability claims.

 

 

Background on former VA attorney, Craig Kabatchnick here...
http://www.vawatchdog.org/nfDEC06/nf121706-6.htm

http://www.vawatchdog.org/nfDEC06/nf120506-6.htm

http://www.vawatchdog.org/old%20newsflashes
%20OCT%2006/newsflash10-09-2006-3.htm

Story here... http://www.news-record.com/apps/pbcs.dll/
article?AID=/20070330/NEWSREC01
01/70329034/1005/NEWSREC0101

Story below:

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VA Lawyer disputes VA's claim he didn't perform work

By Lex Alexander & Diane Lamb
Staff Writers

A senior Department of Veterans Affairs official has falsely told a U.S. senator that a Greensboro attorney critical of the VA's disability-claims system never worked for the VA.

Court and agency records, however, show that Craig M. Kabatchnick was among the most senior attorneys defending the VA against disability claims in the early 1990s.

Moreover, a court ordered Kabatchnick off a veteran's case because he had been part of the case previously — representing the VA.

Messages seeking comment from the VA official, Daniel L. Cooper, the undersecretary of veterans affairs for benefits, were not returned Thursday.

Kabatchnick, who practices law with Everett and Everett in Durham, has been invited to testify April 17 before a U.S. House committee on the merits of four bills that address veterans issues.

Kabatchnick has criticized the VA for turning what is supposed to be a neutral process into an adversarial one in which veterans seeking benefits are outgunned on both facts and law by the VA.

The issue is of particular importance to North Carolina. More service members are discharged here than in almost any other state, and within a few years more veterans will be living here than in almost any other state.

The problem, however, is nationwide. About 404,000 disability claims are pending this week, and 28 percent of them are more than six months old, the VA's statistics show.

The situation involving Kabatchnick arose after a Florida veteran, Lynward Winslow, contacted U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson's Washington office in January because he hadn't gotten a ruling on his claim almost a year after it had been filed.

Winslow's letter mentioned a Sept. 3 article in the News & Record in which Kabatchnick said that during his VA tenure, he and other attorneys routinely had sought loopholes through which veterans' claims could be denied.

Nelson, a Florida Democrat, wrote Feb. 8 to VA Secretary Jim Nicholson . Nelson asked for information on Winslow's case and about Kabatchnick's statements in particular, and about the department's handling of disability claims in general.

Cooper responded in March that Winslow's claim had been denied.

He also wrote: "According to our records, Mr. Craig Kabatchnick has never been employed by VA. In addition, VA does not make a practice of finding ways to deny disability claims."

Winslow contacted the News & Record on Tuesday about Cooper's letter to Nelson, and the newspaper followed up with a series of database searches.

Nelson responded to Cooper's letter Thursday with a letter of his own seeking "an explanation for this apparent discrepancy" between court records and Cooper's disavowal of Kabatchnick.

Kabatchnick said he does not think Cooper's statement was accidental nor an oversight.

"No letter to a representative or a senator goes out without a review," he said. "Any ranking official within the general counsel's office knew I had worked there, especially the (current acting) general counsel himself, who worked with me from 1991 to 1992 in the same office, on the same team."

The acting general counsel, according to the VA's Web site, is Paul J. Hutter, who, with Kabatchnick, is included in organizational charts from that time . A message left with a departmental spokesman was not returned Thursday.

Kabatchnick also ridiculed Cooper's statement that VA staff do not routinely seek out ways to deny disability claims.

"The VA's actions speak for themselves, " he said.

Contact Lex Alexander at 373-7088 or lalexander@news-record.com

Contact Diane Lamb at 373-7169 or dlamb@news-record.com 

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Larry Scott  --