All across America and around the world, this is Veterans Radio.
This is Veterans Radio.
Welcome to Veterans Radio.
I am Jim Fossone.
I'm the officer of the deck today.
We've got some great programs for you.
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We're in the shadow of the Marine Corps' birthday a couple of days ago, and by now they should
be sober again.
So we will do a couple of programs today, interviews that focus on the Marines but have
some of interest to everybody.
Certainly everybody was in Vietnam.
We're going to like this first story, getting the real story about the Marine Corps deadliest
sniper in Vietnam.
And then we're going to do something on Camp Lejeune that came out recently, and we turned
to one of our attorney experts to update us on that.
So stick around, both interesting stories for you today.
We'd like to welcome to Veterans Radio today Jim Lindsay out in beautiful Oregon, and he's
going to talk to us about a book he wrote, The Sniper, The Untold Story of the Marine
Corps' Greatest Marksman of All Time.
Jim, welcome to Veterans Radio.
Yeah, well thank you.
I'm glad to be here.
Well, you know, it's an interesting story.
I went and caught my attention, and I got the book and read through it.
I was really excited because I learned something that changed my perspective because I didn't
know about Chuck Mowinny, another good Oregon guy and served in Vietnam.
Actually, he was in your neck of the woods, but for the longest time, you know, you didn't
know who this guy was or what he had done.
Tell us how you came about writing the book.
In 1979, my brother and I bought a ranch in Eastern Oregon, we're farmers.
So I moved over to Baker City near the farm and we'd bought, and I met Chuck Mowinny.
We were pretty young fellas then, and we both liked drinking beer, and there was a tavern
called the Idelauer, a kind of mill tavern, and he worked for the Forest Service.
And if I was in town about quitting time, maybe getting parts somewhere, I'd stop there
and have beers with him.
He's just a great guy to socialize with.
But he had grown up in rural Oregon, always was outside kind of guy, you know, all his
buddies in the neighborhood had BB guns and were shooters, if you will.
So when he got into the Marine Corps, he kind of was looking at Camp Pendleton to move his
way over to Scout Sniper School, and he was able to do that, wasn't he?
Yeah, it was kind of like things happened to people's lives.
It was accidental.
He joined the Marines right out of high school in 1967, and they sent him to Camp Pendleton
for his basic training.
He wanted to be a Navigator.
He wanted to fly for the Marines.
So the night before the test he was to take for aviation training, him and another two
guys went out and did the town up, and he woke up in a movie theater at five o'clock
in the morning.
I mean, they really did a good job.
So he didn't do very well in the test.
So he was going to have to wait around for another month, and they had him washing dishes.
In the meantime, the Scout Sniper School opened, and that caught his eye because he loved shooting,
liked hunting, that sort of thing.
So he signed up for that, and so that changed his life right there, and no one knew, including
him, that he would be the best of the best before it was over.
Well, and you talk about how life doesn't always go as you planned or as unplanned.
He got into Cypress School.
He graduated the top of the class, and they said, great, you're going to Da Nang off the
Vietnam young man, May of 1968.
He gets over there, and what assignments do they give him?
Oh, it was heartbreaking for Chuck, because getting on that plane, he was one person,
but getting off in Vietnam, the cards had changed.
They just heard him off the tarmac there like a bunch of cattle, and he ended up in a just
regular marine outfit as a grunt.
He did speak up about it, but they weren't looking for snipers, they were looking for
just regular ground pounders, and so he ended up in an outfit, a garbage bridge up north,
and it was pretty quiet, and he was there for a few weeks, and then they moved himself
back down just west of Da Nang, and there was big battles going on there, and that's
when he got, he was in an outfit, and they were under fire, and he witnessed a guy next
to him, he was a machine gunner, and then Chuck started helping his helper, and he got
shot, and then Chuck got the machine gun, and he knew if something didn't change, he
wasn't going to make it home, and so he was able to finagle around and get into an outfit
that had a sniper platoon, and that was about 20 miles west of Da Nang, in a place called
An Hoa.
And he knew that the machine gunners were very vulnerable, obviously the enemy wanted
to take them out, and he had trained and proven himself that he could be a sniper, he had,
it was an excellent shot, but again, any of us who have served the military knows better
than you, so they started, well you're a grunt, well now you're running the machine gun, and
he knew he would be better off on his own, protecting other Marines as a sniper, and
he kind of forced his way into, as I read the story, the sniper by Jim Lindsay, he kind
of forced his way into that sniper group by first being a scout, and then if you will
moving up the ladder to a sniper where he was obviously extremely effective, but it
really was sort of not as planned as maybe that Chuck thought it was going to be on his
way over, did he?
No.
Chuck Owini is a special individual, this book starts when he's just a child, and you
can see him and I both wanted to, we both wanted it to start early in his life, so that
the people who read it, the reader would find out what kind of a person turns into a successful
sniper like he was.
So he was really well, he had the ability to talk himself into some pretty neat situations
in his life, and he got a job at the four dealership in Lakeview when he was just 15,
and a great job for a kid, and he got his own pilot's license when he was still in
high school, and he was just amazing, and so when he got that predicament, he handled
it well, he faked a toothache and he got into back into Dundoo and Waugh and was able to
talk to the boys, to learn about becoming a sniper, and when they found out his record
he got to be a spotter for another fellow, and there he was, and that's how it started.
Yeah, and it is a good way to introduce people to what it takes to be a sniper, because these
are regular guys who have extraordinary skills in this area of patience, breathing, reading
all the signs that you need to read as a sniper or as a spotter, because you're out there
all alone, you may be shooting a long distance, but to be an expert marksman, you've got
to have a lot of additional skills, don't you?
Yeah, all this was new to me, I learned so much about talking to Chuck about how it worked,
and he was real patient with me, I forget what he'd tell me, and we met over a dozen
times and he lived 400 miles from me, or he does, in fact as I talked to him this morning,
and he taught me what it was to be a sniper, and one of the most important things is to
know where you're at at all times, and when he went through sniper school they had a lot
of training on being out in the absolute darkness and know where you're at, and so he was really
handy for some of the outfits that would, they kind of borrowed me, he was kind of like
a gun for hire, him and his spotter, they were always together, and of course there
were multiple spotters that came and went, and most of them got to be snipers of their
own, and he would go out with an outfit, and they used him pretty hard as far as he was
about his ability to know where he was.
That's situational awareness comes through right in the book, and it's one of those intangibles
you get to talk about, you have to have a real backbone and discipline and patience,
but that situational awareness saved him more than once in Vietnam, and he had some pretty
amazing kills, but you kind of lose the essence of the man if you just focus on the kills,
because he also struggled with the commandment thou shalt not kill, and he struggled with
when he came home after his first tour, he kind of didn't, he knew he didn't fit in anymore,
so there's a lot of stuff bubbling in the pot of Chuck Mowinny as he's going through
living this about two year period where he's becoming this top sniper, how does he reflect
on all that turmoil that was going on in his head?
You know, calmly.
He's a, fortunately for him, he's a person that can handle things like that, and a lot
of it I think was probably the way he was raised, his dad was a Marine, but he wasn't
raised to be a killer, but he was raised to do a good job of whatever he was going to
do, and that was his job was to protect and save other Marines lives, and that's how
he justified it.
Right before he made his first kill, he saw a Marine killed out in a field, and the NVA
had walked into this NVA outfit and it was kind of an ambush, and this fellow out in
the front, he was pinned down out in the field, and it was awful, they didn't kill him fast,
it was hard on Chuck, and so then it wasn't long, and then he was doing the shooting,
and that's, he became kind of bitter when he saw what they did to his fellow Marine,
so that helped, and then after the first one, and then it was, he just did his job, and
he was awful good at it.
Yeah, the story that you've written, the sniper on Chuck Mowinny, Marine Sniper in Vietnam,
really gets across this idea that in his psyche, every kill that he's making is saving countless
Marines, and that's his job.
You said one of the things his upbringing was, if you got a job, do it well.
He understood his job was to protect these other Marines, and as a result kept doing
his job as a sniper for the, actually I think he did three tours, didn't he over in Vietnam?
Yeah, he did the first one in the Marine Corps 13 months, the first tour, and that's when
he went home and you mentioned that his friends were still just kids, and he couldn't, he
saw right away that they didn't have any clue, or didn't understand, and the Vietnam war
was different than all other wars where they didn't really want to know, and so I think
maybe that might have been why he never told anybody until he was outed by another author
later on, but he was home, and he just wasn't welcomed by his peers, even the grownups around
town, they kind of looked the other way, and of course his family, he spent a lot of time
with his family during that month, and then he decided that his real friends, the real
people that he could depend on were back in Vietnam, so he went back and did another tour
where he finished out with his 103 kills, and so he went home again and signed up for
a third tour, but he realized that they wouldn't let him be a sniper for another tour, I guess
two tours was a max, and he wanted to be a helicopter side gunner, and he got back over
there and they wouldn't let him do that, so he became kind of a placement, and he did
a good job of that, that wasn't his deal, but then he got the last one, then he went
back to San Diego, and he was a cook, until somebody noticed who he was, and then he got
to be a rifle instructor, and then he liked that.
Well, again, the military always thinks he knows what he's doing best, they take an expert
marksman and make him cook just crazy, but one of the stories in the book is about Valentine's
Day in 1969, which really was a real test for Chuck Mowenny, can you talk about that
a little bit?
Yeah, that's probably the one advance that he's most known for, and he'd been there a
while, and he had been, I think it was just right into his second tour, he was out with
a company of Marines, one that he worked for fairly often, his CO was Mike Wiley, and it
was during a storm was coming in, and they were dug in at a perimeter, and there was
a little airplane come flying over, like a Piper Cub, American plane, and the guy radioed
down to him said that there was a battalion of NVA across the river, and he was afraid
they were going to cross, and so single handedly, Chuck Mowenny, after dark with a starlight
scope and his spotter with him, stopped it from happening, and it was just an amazing
feat that what he did, and they've tried to, shooters have tried since then, he shot 16
NVA in 30 seconds, this was according to the spotter, and it turned, they discouraged
him, and they never tried to cross again, and they've tried to set up games where people
have tried doing this, and nobody can do it, they have 16 targets that popped up, and it
was really an amazing thing that he was, I don't know how many Marines he saved, because
they, they had to cross that river, they went right over those Marines.
Yeah, yeah, and as you write in the book, The Sniper, and we're talking to Jim Lindsay,
it is again some of that situational awareness, after the plane radioed down, he knew right
where to go, where to find his, find a hide that was the right spot to stop them crossing
the river and overrunning the, the Marines that he was with, and again being able to,
you know, knock down 16 NVA in such a short time, sort of this amazing feat, but it's
all those other things too, it's all that, those intangibles having the right heartbeat,
using pattern, calmness, patience, situational awareness, it's really an amazing feat that
I don't think most of us do are, our adrenaline and our heartbeat would be going crazy, wouldn't
it?
Yeah, yeah, you might just, one of the, there was a guy came across, a guide, and stood right
beside Chuck, this was in the dark, and Chuck says, he was so close to me, I could hear
water dripping off of him, and he wasn't going to let him get past him, he was about ready
to dispatch him, and the guy turned around and went back across, and then it was just
a few minutes before they all came, or started across, but yeah, he was, he was pretty cool
about things.
Yeah, cool, that's true.
Yeah, that's an understatement.
Now I want to talk a little bit about, because Chuck only stayed in for a couple of years,
got out of the Marine Corps, came back to Oregon, and went into the Forest Service, and
completed his whole professional career, I think, in the US Forest Service, they had
a family, kids, the whole thing, which again is this sort of like, okay, I close that chapter
of the book, I'm not bragging about it, I'm not telling anybody about it, and you kind
of stumble on it, and only because you were really friends, was he willing to open up
and help tell the story, and have the book written, if I understand it right.
Yeah, that is, he actually did go, they were, he was in Vietnam when they were starting
to slow down, and he got out early because of that.
And then he went back to Lakeview, and started his next part of chapter in his life, and
with his credentials as being a Marine, helped him get on with the US Forest Service, and
so then right away they were moving him from here to there, and just like everything else
he ever did in his life, he excelled at it, and he became a machinery operator, built
the roads and that sort of thing, and it wasn't very long, and he was the boss.
So at first, or not gradually, he had some trouble, and he didn't know what it was,
you know, it was terrible, I mean, you talk about going from a high, of what he was doing
over there for two years, down to driving a bulldozer.
Right, right, yeah.
And he didn't tell anybody because he knew there was nobody that would ever understand,
except for another sniper, and he didn't go around with a sign looking for one, and so
there was some turmoil going on inside of him, and he became a heavy drinker, and not
like I think of an alcoholic, but I mean he was hit the tavern after work every day, and
sometimes pretty late, and it was, some things were bothering him, and I don't think he,
I don't even know for sure if he really knew it, but he lived right on the edge until he
met a gal, and that was another Forest Service worker, and her name was Robin Hood, she was
a few years younger, and they hit it off, and so they had a family, three nice boys,
and they're all doing fine, and she kind of helped him come out of it, I don't even know
if she wouldn't, well she didn't even know it, he didn't tell her about it either, and
the only way it happened to come out is his last father, Joseph Ward, wrote a book called
Dear Mom, and that was the outing, that was the, you mentioned it earlier that Chuck kind
of got outed, and it got confirmed that he had 103 confirmed kills, another 216 probable
kills, and a confirmed kill required an officer to see it occur, and be ridden up, and that
outed him as the highest sniper marksman number, while most of the world for a long time thought
it was Carlos Hatchcock, who had 93 kills, a good Arkansas boy who did a 20 year career
in the Marine Corps, and Chuck must have just been happy to let Hatchcock have the glory,
and he'd just stay out of it and keep a low profile, and that's one of the things that
caught my interest in your book, The Sniper by Jim Lindsay, it's the untold story of the
Chuck Mowinny, the Marine Corps' greatest marksman of all time, because I knew the Hatchcock
story, I'd never heard the story on Chuck Mowinny.
Yeah, it surprised everybody, and Chuck was, he wasn't really ready for it, he came out
and then all of a sudden he was interviewed by, like I think the LA Times, and it wasn't,
it was no way he was going to stop it, you know, it was out of the bottle then, and so
he, in fact, he had quite a time with it, some of his friends kind of got cold, and
he didn't know why, and it was a, and at the time it happened, I was over in Eastern Oregon
for 20 years running this ranch, and then, then my parents and family, they were getting
everybody's getting over, so I kind of wanted to come back, and so I come back, and my brother
and I are partners, and we're raising, we raise grass seed here for lawns and pastures,
that sort of thing, and so I came back on the west side, and one evening I was sitting
there watching TV, and there was Chuck Mowinny, and it was on the History Channel or something,
and it was him, and I couldn't hardly believe it, and I, he'd been there talking about all
the stuff he did, and I thought, my gosh, I just had no idea, so I called him up, and
by that time I had been writing books, and he knew, and you remember me, everything,
so we talked about the whole, and I said, you know, somebody ought to write about you,
and I went over and talked, or went over to visit the state all night in their house and
everything, and they, so I had to go, yeah, let's do this.
Well, it's important for a lot of reasons to get history out in the records out, that's
why we've been doing Veterans Radio for 20 years now, telling veteran stories. I thought
the article in the Los Angeles Times that was written, the headline captured it, I thought,
a sniper at peace with his duties, and I really think that captured Chuck's ultimate position
here. I'm not surprised to hear that when he got back, you know, he had difficulties
and turmoil in his own head, and drinking maybe more than he should have, I think everybody
did come back and have years and years of transition to get comfortable with the Vietnam
War, and I'm not even sure we're comfortable with it today, but your book does a great
job, it's an easy read, I really tell people that if you want to know about the greatest
Marine Sniper, this is the true story. Jim, where can they find the book?
You can get it, of course, online, you know, Amazon, there's several different outfits
you can order it from, it's in the major bookstores, and even some small ones, but
you can get it at the New York City Airport. There you go, it's everywhere.
There's a thrill for my, as a lady here in Corralis, Oregon, she's my editor, she's
about my age, and this has been a real thrill for her too, as of me, the book has been so
well received, and I'm happy for Chuck, and so as she was on a little trip and went through
the airport there, and there was the book, she was involved so much, and I'm really
tickled her, but so you can get it anywhere, I...
No, it's a good read, I encourage folks to do it, and Jim Lindsay, I appreciate you taking
some time with Veterans Radio today, and certainly pass along to Chuck Mowinny, our thanks for
what he did to save all kinds, untold numbers of Marines back in the day in Vietnam, so
Jim, thanks for your time today.
Well, thanks for having me on here, I really appreciate it, you're doing, you got a nice
deal here, and you do a good job of it.
Thank you. So now you know who the deadliest sniper was in the Marine Corps, not one who
got the most publicity, maybe, but now he's getting his due. Stick around, listen to a
couple of words from our sponsors, and then we're going to talk some more about, uh,
the taxic water at Camp Lejeune and some opportunities for those who were exposed to be compensated.
Learn how you can be there for veterans. Visit veteranscrisisline.net. Veteranscrisisline.net.
A message from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
If you have a VA claim denied by the Board of Veterans Appeals, contact Legal Health
for Veterans at 1-800-693-4800. They're experts in handling cases before the U.S. Court of
Appeals for Veterans Claims. Their number again, 1-800-693-4800.
We want to welcome back to Veterans Radio, one of our go-to experts, Attorney Catherine
Groll. Catherine, welcome back to Veterans Radio.
Thank you, Jim. It's good to be here.
Well, we've had you on a couple of times, and we had Mike Cox, you're with the, you're
a partner at the Mike Cox Law Firm. On before, Mike is a Marine, was the Attorney General
for the State of Michigan, and now in private practice, and one of the things you guys are
doing is working on these Camp Lejeune federal lawsuit that kind of got created out of the
Camp Lejeune Justice Act. So we've had you to talk about the act in general and the timeframe.
Why don't you remind everybody what the act allows Marines who were at Camp Lejeune to
do and what the timing is on that?
Absolutely. The PACT Act was a, I call it an umbrella statute legislation that was designed
to figure out some compensation for all of the toxic exposures that the various veterans
have been exposed to throughout the years all over the world. One section of that has
to do with all of the Marines that were in Camp Lejeune from August of 1953 through December
of 1987, and may have been exposed to a variety of horrific chemicals in the water table there
that have led to a number of terrifying illnesses and diseases for which they may qualify. The
PACT Act allows you to bring an administrative claim with the Department of Navy within the
two year period from when the legislation was signed, which was August 10th of 2022,
and you have until August 10th of 2024 to apply to the Navy for an administrative claim
relating to your illness and disease criteria. After that six month administrative period,
you are entitled to go to the litigation component of it, which is run by the Department of Justice,
and that's in North Carolina by statute. Those judges in the federal court will be
in control of what happens there.
And what's so significant also is that typically you can't sue the, if you're in the military,
you can't sue them for nothing. And so this created this opportunity in North Carolina
for this specific set of exposures over that period of time. And I read somewhere, Catherine,
that something like a thousand, over a thousand individual federal lawsuits have been already
filed.
1100 as of yesterday.
Okay. And on the administrative side, which is kind of a step towards, if you don't resolve
it there, then you can file in litigation down in North Carolina. Something like maybe
90,000 administrative claims. Is that kind of the number?
93,000 as of yesterday.
So you know, there's a lot of men and women who are involved in this. Some family members
also have some rights, as I understand it.
Family members do as well as the civilian employees who are employed on the base and
provided administrative services in support of the Marines.
So this is really pretty comprehensive. And if you pass through Camp Lejeune, it's probably
something you ought to be thinking about. But as I said, we've had my cox on before.
We've had Catherine Grohl here on before, but there's a new wrinkle, if you will, a
new opportunity to discuss kind of what's going on. And it's, you sent this over to
me and I read the issued public guidance on elective option for Camp Lejeune Justice
Act claims. And as I'm reading this, I said, no, nobody other than a Philadelphia lawyer
is going to be able to figure this out. Who the heck dreamed this up?
It's pretty dense reading, isn't it?
It is. It is. So I thought, well, I'm going to get one of the experts on to talk about
kind of what was behind this. And it's hot off the press, if you will. I don't, probably
nobody's gone through it yet, but talk to us about this new public guidance and elective
option.
Well, I think one of the biggest things that we should recognize is that finally we do
have an acknowledgement from the United States government that they have responsibility for
what took place on Camp Lejeune and they're going to have to value it and pay and compensate
those people who were damaged. So we have at least an acknowledgement from them that
that is not a dispute, those things. What has happened is that the Department of Navy with
these 93,000 cases has not made a single settlement offer. And when we went to the hearing in
North Carolina, the head judge of the North Carolina Eastern District Court made it very
clear that they expected offers immediately to be made because he wanted the money in
the hands of the vets and he could not understand why all this time had passed a year already
and the Navy had not made a single offer. So this is partly in response to the judges
being angry that nothing had been done yet. So that's the first thing that I think everyone
needs to understand is that the judges are adamant that things start moving in a much
quicker pace to get money into the hands of the vets.
Well, if you don't, otherwise everybody just suffers with these diseases and dies. I mean,
you know, it took an act of Congress for this to get looked at and I'm not too surprised
the Navy, which probably didn't have enough lawyers to deal with this problem when they
got dumped, what will be 100,000 plus claims on them, they had to say, well, Jesus, is
there any model we can use to try to find our way through this because we can't try
a thousand or 10,000 or 100,000 of these claims?
Right. I think truthfully, they were caught off guard. They weren't prepared economically
in terms of staffing or economically in terms of the high level of technology that they
would need so that proofs could be submitted with the claims. They don't have sufficient
portals and they're not capable of taking in all of the data. So they're behind 10 months,
even just even in processing any of the claims that have been submitted.
Well, this 10 page public guidance on an elective option is a pretty dense reading and
I talked to us what they thought they were doing in terms of setting up this elective
option grid and process.
So the idea was to allow all of the vets who meet a certain level of criteria, what's
called an early out or elective option, and meeting certain criteria that is not in the
statute, they could get quicker compensation. But the more Mike and I dug into this, we
realized that there's so many landmines and roadblocks built into what you would have
to do to get to these settlement proposals that they're making to even get an offer.
So that's one of the things I wanted to comment on. This elective option, if you say, yeah,
I want to do that, it doesn't commit them to settle with you, does it?
No, it does not. It is not an offer, it's a proposal for an offer, very different. You
can't just say, okay, I'm in, and you're going to get, they're going to write a check in
60 days. There are about 22, I think, hoops we counted that you're going to need to jump
through to see if you can even get to that point.
Well, one of the things that they tried to do, and this is typical, you sort of try
to make things very objective versus subjective, hey, how long were you at Camp Lejeune? Was
it a 30 to one year exposure, one year to five, more than five? So one of the things they
do is break it into length of time, and then they also break it into what they called Tier
1 qualifying injuries and Tier 2 qualifying injuries, which I thought was kind of an interesting
approach. Could you explain that a little bit?
Yes, and one of the things I want to make sure your audience understands is that this
proposal is not in accord with the statute. The statute does not require any of these
time frames. It doesn't break illnesses down into categories. There's no references to
any of this in the statute. This is something that the Department of Navy and Justice came
up with on their own that is just for this particular administrative process. So one
of the things that they did was they reduced the number of illnesses that qualify in this
elective option. They not only reduced them, but they also decided to create a stratus
of what they considered to be a higher level injury versus a lower level injury. We have
no idea what they're using to make those categorizations. It's not disclosed to us.
So actually that's one of the things they found kind of offensive here. They decided
that take your pick here, liver cancer, kidney cancer, or bladder cancer were tier 1's and
that Parkinson's disease and kidney disease were tier 2. And if you know anybody suffering
from Parkinson's disease, it's horrible on not only them, but the whole family for a
really long period of time. You just raised what we think is one of the most significant
and important points. Pain and suffering is what we are asking our vets to be compensated
for. Putting these numbers on how long you were there and what your illnesses does not
in any way take into the individual's struggles, their family issues, the loss of quality of
life for anybody. It lumps everybody into group. I'm just going to give you an example.
We have a client that had liver cancer. He treated for 4-8 weeks. His tumors were removed
and he's going on to live a healthy and productive life. We've had other people that went through
chemotherapy and radiation therapy and died in 3 years, a long, slow death. And yet they're
valued at the same, but the one who died is going to get $100,000 more. Which Mike feels
like, if that's what you're telling us, a marine's life is worth, you better rethink
your position.
They're proposing to offer settlements that range from $100,000 to $450,000. Maybe you
throw on another $100,000 if you actually died from that injury. The maximum offers $550,000
per veteran.
I was a little so. I know it's an offer without really teeth in it and I'll tell you why.
Almost every one of the clients has been there less in the year. Camp Lejeune is a training
base. Typically, most vets are rotated in and out for a series of months for training
and then they're sent overseas or to another duty station. So the majority of people are
probably less than one year of exposure. In order to get to the one to the five years
of exposure, and here's another example. We have a client that was there for a year and
two weeks. Well, the Navy requires that we remove his annual leave. So once we take out
his 30 days of annual leave, guess what? He doesn't make the one to five years exposure.
So finding someone that makes five years or over, that was stationed at Camp Lejeune is
almost impossible to find. It's very rare that someone would stay there for a period
of five years or longer. So that higher number is not really reflective of the majority of
people who could even get that. It also rang for me a little bit and I didn't
research this, I'm sure others have. But there had to be a greater approach for the victims
of 9-11 who the firefighters and first responders and other sort of catastrophes where the government
has said, hey, yeah, that's our fault, we're going to pay you for some. This just doesn't
seem like it matches up to those other things. Is my general feeling right or wrong?
It's right because one of the other concerns that we have is the limitation of 35 years.
If it's 35 years past the last date that you were at Camp Lejeune where you get diagnosed
and treated for some of these diseases, you're not covered under this proposal. Now, again,
that's not in the statute that it has to be manifest itself within 35 years. And the litigation
side of things, there's no limitations on that. If you have a direct link and we've
got VA disability statements and we've got doctors writing letters connecting the dots
between the illness and the exposure, regardless of how many years ago it was, you've just
routed out a whole group of people who are never going to be eligible.
A lot of times the government issues these in federal register and they solicit comments
on them and then the rules might change. This isn't really a rule, it's a guidance. But
is there a process that they've encouraged for the Navy and DOJ to say, okay, we're putting
this out here, but tell us what we got right and what we got wrong? Or is this a, hey,
this is our position, move on. This is not subject to discussion. And you know, one
of the things that Mike was concerned about is the way it was done. Typically, if there's
a legitimate offer being conveyed, it's conveyed through the attorney to their client. You
don't publish it on a public website for everybody to see and run big numbers past them
to where that's what they're seeing and hearing. And then when they get into the fine tooth
details of 11 pages of qualifying factors to even get to this money. So it was kind
of a misrepresentation in the way they did it and they circumvented every attorney having
a meaningful conversation with their client about this.
Was this doesn't seem like it was designed to get a bunch of settlements as much as designed
to say maybe to the court, well, we did something.
I agreed. I agreed. Just as an example, if you met all of the qualifying conditions and
your illness manifested itself in the timeframe that they asked you for, I still can't get
you a proposal or an offer because they are demanding that I get certified original records
signed by a doctor certifying that they're original. I can't do that. Many of these records
are destroyed. Some of them are on microfilm that we had to get. We had to hire a retrieval
company to go into all these doctors offices to get copies of records. They're not originals.
They're copies and you have to have the original to apply for this proposal. We can't do that.
We don't have the ability to do that and people are going to get left out that way. Another
concern is if you have two diseases, which many of our guys do, they've got chronic kidney
disease and Parkinson's or chronic kidney disease and pancreatic cancer, they only get
to apply for one level, not both. In the 9-11 model that you were talking about, a point
system is ascribed as settlement grids created so that there's value given to every facet
of your life that adds up to a total sum. That part's going to be navigated in the litigation,
but the administrative claim part is not looking at those important factors at all.
I really think that in many regards, knowing how normal civilians operate, not lawyers,
but they're going to go over to the far right-hand side and say, well, I could use a half million
dollars right now. I'll take that without really understanding that that's not really
what's being offered here, is it? It's really not. All that's being offered
here is the possibility for you to file a claim if you meet the 22 guiding characteristics
that the Navy has set up. They also have a number of frequently asked
questions, which again is a standard government issue thing and ask, what if I decline the
settlement, what happens and why only these nine diseases?
Well, the other thing is too, is they have a caveat in here that they can withdraw or
change this at any time they choose. It's not like what a standard offer and settlement
would be. When you have a standard offer and settlement, both parties are engaging in good
faith and trying to actively come to a resolution that meets both needs. This isn't that. This
is, we're giving you an opportunity to get an early out if you meet all these criteria,
if you don't move on to the North Carolina litigation. This is where the judges were
concerned. They kept saying, why do we have an administrative
process if you're not doing anything during the administrative process? You've got all
these claims for six months and you're doing nothing with them except dumping them over
here on to the North Carolina court system. Well, that's what they've done. Even if someone
wanted to apply now, it's going to be two years before the Navy is going to be able
to get to their claim because they're still so far behind on the ones that were submitted
without asking for the offer.
It, as I said, these frequently asked questions also hit on one issue that I know many veterans
we've talked to about this and we don't handle these kind of case cases. We leave it to experts
like Mike Cox and Catherine Grohl. Will accepting an EO offer affect my VA benefits?
Right.
And then they say, no, accepting an EO offer for a CLJA claim will not affect the claimant's
VA benefits. Is there hidden in that answer? But if you don't accept this, you don't know
what will happen.
There is. They're suggesting now the VA has published on its website that it is statutorily
prohibited from collecting money from the United States government to compensate it
for disability claims. So that's been on their website since the Camp Lejeune cases started.
The suggestion here from this document is that if you take this early out, you're not
going to have to worry about your VA disability. But if you don't, we can't promise that the
VA is not going to come after you and reduce your benefits. Now, that would be interesting
because the VA and its representatives have been telling all of the Camp Lejeune vets
that they're not going to have to pay it back. So that's a little bit of a twisted idea
in there that I don't know is accurate.
Yeah. I was really disappointed to read that answer to that frequently asked questions
because it was designed to intimidate that. Well, if you get an award or settlement outside
of the EO process, it may be offset, is what it says, may be offset by the value of VA
benefits. And that's, I think, contrary to law and seems to me to be trying to unduly
influence people. So I'm a little disappointed that it was drafted in that, certainly in
that fashion.
I agree with you.
As you look at the national landscape, because I know you have clients all over the country,
and as I said, there's a coming, there'll be 100,000 of these administrative claims
before the years out, I'm sure. Where do we go from here? Because this isn't going to
get these cases out of the North Carolina courts. Do you think the North Carolina court
has to turn around and appoint a special master to develop its own matrix of how do we settle
these things?
So the good news, Jim, is that is already in process. The leadership committee that the
judges have appointed have already been hard at work trying to set up a national database
that's going to allow us to do the inputs for all of our clients once they get out of
the administrative claim process. And we don't know what all the criteria is going to be.
That's being fleshed out right now, and the judge has to sign off on it. Proposals are
being submitted for their review. Mike and I will be meeting with the national leadership
committees next Wednesday to get updates on where we are with the national models for
a settlement grid. So I believe that there will be a few cases tried. They're looking
at possibly March or April of next year to try a few what they call bellwether cases,
which would be cases that could test out how a jury looks at the evidence and what kind
of values they're putting on the cases and what the expert opinions are going to look
like so that we'll have a better sense of what we might need to negotiate with in terms
of the, let's just say the Navy and the Justice Department come up with a $500,000 settlement
on liver cancer. And yet we get a jury verdict of $4 million for liver cancer. We can't
go back to our clients and say take $500,000 when we know that a jury could value it so
much higher. So those things are going to be unfolding over the next six months to a
year while we navigate this terrain of all the administrative claims that are going to
get dumped in North Carolina. Well, more to follow. We'll be continuing to update our
veteran radio listeners as this progresses because it affects so many Marines. We're
talking to Attorney Katherine Grohl who's our expert on this. Katherine, if people want
to reach out to you, where would they find you? We are at the Mike Cox Law Firm and we
have a website that allows people to come in and ask about anything related to the Camp
Lejeune. Mike's got some information posted on there and he does a great job of outlining
what the criteria is and the disease process on there. And then our direct line phone number
is 734-591-4002 and our law firm website is mikecoxlaw.com. Katherine, we appreciate
the time that you've given the veterans radio today and to have in the past to keep people
updated on this and we'd be very happy if we could reach out to you in the future as
this develops over the next six or nine months. It would be my pleasure Jim. Thank you so
much. Well, there's a little bit of information you probably didn't know about and really
it's there's been so much advertising on this Camp Lejeune water. We want to bring
you the truth as compared to the slick commercials that you get in 30 seconds or 60 seconds.
So we hope you enjoyed the Chuck Bawini story and some update on the issues down at Camp
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when Dale's back on Veterans Radio you are dismissed.
I'm Jim Fosso and I'm here to help you out.