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VETERAN APPEALS ARMY'S DISABILITY RULING --
Head injury not severe enough to keep military
benefits.
Story here...
http://www.fayettevillenc.com/article?id=240288
Story below:
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Disability ruling is appealed
By Kevin Maurer
Staff writer
A former 82nd Airborne Division paratrooper wounded in Iraq is appealing
an Army ruling that determined his head injury was not severe enough to
keep his military benefits.
Cpl. Richard Twohig was injured in May 2003 when he was thrown off an
armored personnel carrier and landed on his head.
Twohig, at the time a team sergeant in the 1st Battalion of the 325th
Airborne Infantry Regiment, was diagnosed with post-concussive syndrome
with intractable headaches and a mood disorder.
He suffers from intense headaches at least once a week. The pain is so
severe he spends 12 to 14 hours in bed with the shades drawn, he said.
His short-term memory also constantly fails him, forcing him to have
simple questions repeated.
The Army determined that Twohig was less than 30 percent disabled. In
order to maintain his Defense Department benefits, he had to meet the 30
percent level.
“I’m not doing well,” Twohig said last week in a phone interview from
his home in Tennessee.
He is living near relatives with his two children. He has health care
through the Department of Veterans Affairs, but his children —
2-year-old Damon and 5-year-old Elizabeth — are without medical
benefits.
Twohig is unable to work and was counting on the Army to provide him and
his family with medical benefits.
“I just feel like I was shafted. Things really haven’t gotten better
since the accident,” he said.
The Physical Evaluation Board at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in
Washington ruled in March 2005 that Twohig did not present any objective
information to prove that the headaches were a result of the accident.
The Physical Evaluation Board could not be reached for comment.
Twohig was awarded 10 percent disability, half of what he was awarded in
his informal review.
His lawyer, Mark Waple of Fayetteville, is appealing the board’s ruling
to the Army Board of Correction of Military Records. The appeal was
filed in July and a decision is expected by the end of the year.
Waple argues that Physical Evaluation Board did not make its ruling
based on the “preponderance of evidence,” which is required by law.
Waple also believes that testimony that was disallowed during the
hearing hurt Twohig’s chances of getting 30 percent disability.
Twohig stopped going to the doctor for the headaches after his
neurologist told him he was already receiving the strongest pain
medication available and there was nothing more he could do.
His mother tried to introduce the evidence during the board hearing, but
the chairman would not allow it.
“In view of the advice and counsel he received from his military
treating neurologist, (Twohig) should not have been punished for
following such advice,” Waple wrote in the July appeal.
Waple is among several military lawyers who feel there is a systemic
problem with the way soldiers are being treated by the Physical
Evaluation Board.
Lawyers have said more and more injured soldiers are being shuffled off
the Defense Department books to the VA. The lawyers — including Waple —
say they are reluctant to take cases to the Army Physical Evaluation
Board because they rarely win.
Army officials say the system treats soldiers fairly and there is no
emphasis on shifting the responsibility to the VA.
“I can not understand how the Physical Evaluation Board can defend what
they’ve done in ... (Twohig’s) case,” Waple said.
Staff writer Kevin Maurer can be reached at
maurerk@fayettevillenc.com
or 486-3587.
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Larry Scott
