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ATTORNEY LEADING LAWSUIT KNOWS ABOUT BATTLING
THE VA -- Gordon Erspamer has a chip on his
shoulder
and is the VA's worst nightmare. Erspamer knows
about the VA's long delays, endless appeals and
slow response: his father was an "atomic test
vet."
Gordon Erspamer
For more about the lawsuit against the VA (with
backlinks), click here...
http://www.vawatchdog.org/08/nf08/nfAPR08/nf042308-4.htm
The official web site for this lawsuit is here...
http://www.veteransptsdclassaction.org/index.html
Story here...
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin
/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/24/BA3K10AIB1.DTL
Story below:
-------------------------
Attorney leading suit a veteran in battling VA
C.W. Nevius
Gordon Erspamer, the attorney who brought the lawsuit against the
Department of Veterans Affairs that went to trial this week in U.S.
District Court in San Francisco, is a big, unresponsive government
agency's worst nightmare.
He's a rainmaker attorney for a major firm in the city who has set aside
time to take legal action that doesn't earn a penny. And besides that,
he's got a compelling and personal back story and a chip on his shoulder
to prove it.
Erspamer's cause since the late '70s has been the rights of armed forces
veterans, and this week's trial has the VA squirming over a shocking rate
of suicides among vets and has captured the national spotlight.
The trial led the CBS Evening News this week, and Erspamer says he's
getting thousands of e-mails and calls from veterans and media outlets.
Five years ago, he admits, the American public
probably couldn't have told you what post-traumatic stress disorder was.
Now they are not only aware of the number of vets who are returning from
Iraq and Afghanistan with PTSD - Erspamer estimates it will be one-third
of the 1.7 million who served - but they are ready to look critically at
how they've been treated.
"If you add up the veterans' suicides among those who served in Iraq and
Afghanistan and compare it to the total combat deaths, the veteran
suicides are higher," says Erspamer, who introduced a VA e-mail at the
trial that showed an average of 18 vets a day are committing suicide. "The
VA doesn't want that out."
Erspamer is working the case pro bono with the support of his employer,
the high-powered international law firm Morrison & Foerster. This isn't
his area of interest. He's a well-regarded partner in the firm who is
considered an expert in energy litigation.
But although the case has already taken him away from his regular practice
for almost four months, Erspamer says this is only the beginning of the
journey.
"I have no doubt in my mind that this will go to the Supreme Court," he
said in an interview this week. "But this is not only legally correct, it
is morally correct. For me, this is personal."
His father, Ernest, was one of the "atomic veterans" exposed to large
doses of radiation during bomb tests at Bikini Atoll in 1946. When his
father developed incurable leukemia 33 years later, Erspamer, a year out
of the University of Michigan law school, was frustrated at the lack of
governmental support for veterans.
"My dad said, 'I don't want to spend the last year of my life fighting the
VA,' " Erspamer says. "So I carried it on for him."
His father died in 1980, but it took 10 years for Erspamer to manage to
get disability and death benefits from the VA.
"We won $90,000," he says. "And to tell you the truth, I probably spent
$200,000 of time working on the case."
The process of such cases - long delays, endless appeals and slow response
- has become a common complaint among veterans. But the difference is that
many of them never seem to get the payoff at the end.
Erspamer says another sailor, who was on the ship with his father in 1946,
took the legal argument for his dad's case and wrote across the top of the
page: "I have the same issues as Ernest Erspamer. The only difference is
his son is a lawyer."
Erspamer says the appeal was returned with a single word - "denied."
It was stories like that that kept Erspamer, whose legal field is energy
law, involved in veterans' causes. It has turned out to be an unexpectedly
wrenching experience. At the trial on Tuesday, a woman stood up in the
courtroom and began to scream about "eating our children for profit."
"I have not cried since my father died," he says, "but some of the stories
we've heard (in the current case) brought tears to my eyes. That woman was
clearly one of them - more in distress than angry."
He gets calls at all hours. A recent one came from San Diego, from a
24-year-old soldier named Terry. A rocket-propelled grenade exploded on a
wall above his head and left him with brain trauma and PTSD.
He was awarded benefits, but such a small amount that it was impossible to
hold his life together. His wife left him, his house was repossessed by
the bank, and when he reached Erspamer, he was living on the couch of a
friend, a fellow vet.
Asked to tell his story, Terry got on the phone but got only a few words
out before the hopelessness of his situation overwhelmed him and he began
to weep uncontrollably.
"We'll have to call you back," his friend said and hung up.
Erspamer has high hopes for this case, although he expects that it may
take five or six years to work its way through the courts. A win would
mean, at least in theory, a quicker response to claims and more rights to
appeal for veterans, although Erspamer puts it more succinctly.
"It would mean that you can't treat them like crap, to be blunt," he says.
His dad would be proud.
C.W. Nevius' column appears on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays. E-mail
him at cwnevius@sfchronicle.com.
-------------------------
posted by Larry
Scott
Founder and Editor
VA Watchdog dot Org
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