representing federal employees in and outside the country

Federal and Postal Disability Retirement: Choosing Battles

Posted onAuthorFederal Disability Retirement Attorney2 Comments

Human Resources departments within agencies are set up in order to perform a multitude of services for the employees who comprise the agency itself, and to that extent, the originating idea which constitutes the founding purpose is a noble one. For whatever reason, however, the foundational principles in the course of an evolving department will often get muddled and lost; the driving principle behind a concept merely gets in the way of a paycheck; the employees for whom the department was founded become the “problem” and an adversarial relationship between the H.R. Department and its employees arises.
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OPM Federal Disability Retirement: The Happy Warrior

Posted onAuthorFederal Disability Retirement Attorney2 Comments

The linguistic implications are multiple and rich in historical nuances, derived not merely from the combination of words but because of images from the past and residual connotations not always agreed upon but nevertheless trailing like appendages holding on for dear life to a departing conveyor of thoughts, ideas and characters.  It evokes caricatures of contrasting conditions of smiling in the face of adversity; of taking on opponents on the proverbial field of battle despite unwinnable odds, […] Read More …

OPM Disability Retirement Lawyer: The Balance of Body

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Have you ever noticed that, if you attempt to compensate with one extremity over another, whether because of pain or temporary incapacitation in an attempt to alleviate and relieve the lesser limb, that the one in use becomes slowly debilitated as well? The body is a balanced mechanism; it is designed to work in coordinated fashion, as a unit of entirety. It may well be that if one component of that working aggregate requires temporary suspension, […] Read More …

OPM Disability Retirement: Those Days of Mental Clarity

Posted onAuthorFederal Disability Retirement Attorney1 Comment

One often remarks that we live for such days; when energy, motivation, clarity of mind and enthusiasm for life surges through our veins; one’s outlook is positive, the mystery of life is resolved, and no challenge is too onerous to overcome. But then the mundane monotony of repetitive thoughtlessness returns; and life is back to the normalcy of day-to-day living. […] Read More …

OPM Disability Retirement and the Demythologization of the Process

Posted onAuthorFederal Disability Retirement Attorney1 Comment

Beyond being an ugly word, Spinoza attempted it, but closer to the heart of a flawed hermeneutical approach, the theologian, Rudolf Bultmann spent his career attempting to separate the conceptually inseparable narratives encapsulating historical content, context and the meaning behind miracles and metaphor. All processes are mysterious, until detachedly analyzed, devalued or debunked. Some merely throw up their hands and reject a subject in its entirety; others spend a lifetime in trying to understand it, and thus do cottage industries emerge. […] Read More …

OPM Disability Retirement: The Dissipated Dream, Delayed

Posted onAuthorFederal Disability Retirement Attorney5 Comments

It is an enjoyment and pleasure of the highest order, and yet costs nothing; if remembered, the visual residue can be stored in the safety deposit boxes of one’s memory, “as if” it actually occurred; and retrieving the memories can be as vividly regurgitated in the virtual reality of its existence, as that of having actually been there. […] Read More …

OPM Disability Retirement: The Three Little Pigs

Posted onAuthorFederal Disability Retirement Attorney3 Comments

We are all familiar with the fable of the anthropomorphic three little pigs and the materials used in building their respective houses. The point of the story itself, however, concerns not the elements used, but the craftsmanship employed, and the effort expended, which reveals the underlying values and provides for fertile fodder in teaching the importance of hard work, careful application and sufficient preparatory labor in securing one’s future. […] Read More …

OPM Medical Retirement: Days of Sisyphean Drudgery

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The Myth of Sisyphus is well known, both because of the philosophical essay written by Camus, as well as through the Greek mythological narrative of the condemned figure to toil in endless meaninglessness, by rolling the boulder up the hill, only to watch it go down, and to repeat the process all over again. For Camus and the existentialist viewpoint, it is in the very act of absurdity itself that meaning and significance can be derived; for the Greek citizen of yesteryear, it was perhaps the circularity of the human condition which provided for relevance in the telling of the myth. […] Read More …

OPM Form SF 3112C and the Sufficiency of the Physician’s Statement

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Confusing necessity and sufficiency is always a precarious matter. That which is necessary may not be sufficient for a given purpose, and failure in understanding such a fundamental distinction can be fatal to a Federal Disability Retirement claim. SF 3112C requires that a physician complete and provide essential medical information in the pursuance of a Federal Disability Retirement application. The form itself — SF 3112C — is the vehicle by which the medical documentation is obtained. […] Read More …

Federal Disability Retirement: Vows and Contracts

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People take vows for various reasons: vows of silence, as a satisfaction of a prerequisite for initiation into a religious order; vows of marriage, for the union intended for a lifetime of commitment and self-sacrifice; vows of revenge, for a personal vendetta in retribution for actions suffered against one’s self or on behalf of another; and similar vows of unremitting focus until the satisfaction of such enduring commitment is accomplished. […] Read More …