Pasini, 73, enlisted in March of 1968. He was discharged in 1970 after serving in Vietnam and Okinawa, his health slowly deteriorating soon after.
“I’d been in Camp Lejeune… and in Vietnam areas that could’ve been sprayed with Agent Orange, so I developed primary progressive multiple sclerosis,” he said.
But this law established a two-year window in which to bring otherwise-barred lawsuits. That is one reason for the “hurry up” messaging in those personal injury lawyer ads seeking out plaintiffs. In fact, the advertising campaign kicked off long before the law was even adopted, meaning that personal injury lawyers were soliciting clients to bring lawsuits that were not even viable at the time the ads were running.
Maybe you’ve seen the lawyer ads on TV. For a period of some 35 years, a million people were potentially exposed to contaminated drinking water at Camp Lejeune, the Marines base camp in North Carolina. Since 2017, veterans from that era are presumed to have service-related illnesses from drinking that water. Now the Veterans Affairs Department inspector general has found the Veterans Benefits Administration hasn’t done a great job of processing those claims. The Federal Drive with Tom Temin gets the details from the deputy IG for audits and inspections, Brent Arronte.
The PACT Act also includes important updates for Vietnam era veterans. Specifically, two new presumptive conditions and additional Agent Orange and radiation presumptive locations are now covered. Veterans who may have previously been denied benefits for these new presumptive conditions may make a supplemental claim, a Vietnam veteran can refile a claim for hypertension, for example.
Two major types of errors were discovered in the Camp Lejeune disability claims process. Errors involving about 2,300 claims were made by staffers who assigned an incorrect effective date for benefit entitlement. Overall, the report said, veterans were underpaid at least $13.8 million in benefits for granted claims because VA regional office staff did not assign the earliest effective date permitted by federal regulation.