Veterans Law Institute wins major case and award
Staff and students secure 100 percent disability for Marine with cancer; recognized for community service
Stetson University College of Law Veterans Law Institute received the Distinguished Service Award from the Marine Corps League of Florida at Major B.F. Hickey – Detachment 57’s Marine Corps Birthday Ball celebration on Nov. 16, 2019.
The award recognized the work of the students, faculty and staff in the Veterans Advocacy Clinic to prove that a terminally ill Marine had been exposed to toxic water at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, in the 1980s and developed terminal bile duct cancer. As a result of their efforts, the Marine won an appeal to the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) administrative board and secured benefits to care for him and his family into the future.
Clinic law students, staff and faculty spent two years working to find evidence to support that their Marine client had been in contact with the water. They collaborated with environmental science faculty and students on Stetson University’s main campus in DeLand, environmental law faculty at the College of Law, and sifted through thousands of pages of environmental records received under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
A little help from an alumnus
Joshua Magidson, a shareholder at Macfarlane Ferguson & McMullen, Stetson Law alumnus and a Marine himself, helped connect the Clinic staff with Florida’s Marine Corps League. The League was able to spread the word and track down other Marines who could corroborate that this Marine was exposed to toxic water. After speaking to dozens of Marines, law students found three witnesses who could prove the exposure.
At first the VA denied his claim, but the Veterans Clinic appealed to the administrative board that oversees the VA. In the end, the Marine was awarded a 100 percent disability rating for his cancer.
“It’s an incredible example of the collaborative environment we have across our campuses, and it’s a classic illustration of the impact our law students can have on the world and the individual,” said Stacey-Rae Simcox, director of the Veterans Law Institute and the Veterans Advocacy Clinic.
Major B.F. Hickey – Detachment 57 also presented law student Mary Samarkos (2020), Veterans Law Institute Coordinator Shirley Booker, and Professor Stacey-Rae Simcox with Community Service Awards for their work on the case. The awards were presented by Detachment 57 member and Stetson alumnus Brandon Robinson.
Case Background
The Veterans Advocacy Clinic had been working on this case since the summer of 2017 and logged more than 400 hours of student legal work. The veteran’s main goal was to have the VA recognize that his cancer was caused by his military service so that his wife would be entitled to ongoing widow benefits after his death.
Simcox said in her nearly 15 years of legal practice, this one was case she feared was not winnable initially because they had no clear way to prove the veteran’s cancer was caused by service in the Marine Corps. They had to get creative and seek out further expertise.
They tapped faculty and students in Stetson’s Institute for Biodiversity Law and Policy as well as biology and chemistry department faculty in Deland for help deciphering the meaning of FOIA’d chemical records, aquifers, ground water tables and myriad other environmental law terms that were foreign to many of the staff in the Veterans Advocacy Clinic. Others involved included: Law Professor Royal Gardner, Law Professor Paul Boudreaux, Dr. Kirsten Work (professor of biology in Deland), Dr. Danielle Devoney (visiting assistant professor of environmental toxicology in Deland), Christine Martin (a Stetson DeLand employee and grad student in environmental studies), and law students Oscar Sugranes (’18), Katherine Pratt (’19), Dane Petersen (’19), Brian Paul (’19), John Pilz (’18), and Erica Eddy (3L).
The VA had already recognized the water at Camp Lejeune was toxic and a contributor to bile duct cancer, but the clinic staff had to factually prove that the veteran had been physically exposed to the water there. While the veteran said his job as a truck driver required him to drive back and forth to Camp Lejeune from his actual duty station, the clinic had no proof he had ever actually been to Camp Lejeune besides his word.
Students William Cocarro (’18) and Julie Munderback (’19) spent hours poring through military historical records and trying to locate any witnesses who might have been able to corroborate his travel between the two installations. Finally, in the spring 2019 semester, the veteran remembered that he had been sent to a small training facility called Bogue Field for almost a month. Bogue is geographically in the middle of Camp Lejeune and another Marine Corps installation. The students learned that Bogue had no potable drinking water from the 1950s to the early 2000s and that water had to be shipped in, but no one could verify where the water originated.
Based on that information, 3Ls Mary Samarkos and Chesley Roberts, with the help of Phillip Saul (’19), hit the ground scouring for witnesses who might be able to corroborate that the water at Bogue was being shipped in from Camp Lejeune. With the help of Josh Magidson, the students contacted dozens of veterans and identified three major witnesses who provided corroboration that: 1). the water at Bogue Field was, in fact, shipped in from Camp Lejeune; and 2). the veteran’s job did require him to drive to Camp Lejeune quite often.
Collaborative learning that made a difference
Veterans Clinic staff attorneys Rocky Roodhouse and Jami Worley, along with Simcox worked hard to help the students think through the issues. Shirley Booker, Veterans Clinic office manager, made sure that the veteran was taken care of – even hand-carrying flowers to him on behalf of the clinic when he was hospitalized.
The VA found that the brief submitted from Stetson, “relayed a thorough, well documented, and scholarly discussion about the various exposures while on active duty that may have contributed to his development of the cholangiocarcinoma. Stated in their conclusion was that the veteran had exposure to carcinogenic chemicals in the drinking water at Camp Lejeune, exposure to contaminated water at Cherry Point, Agent Orange in Okinawa, Japan, and liver flukes in Pohang, South Korea. There is ample evidence that the veteran had contact with the drinking water from Camp Lejeune many times during his service. Other exposures in terms of chemical or parasitic infections are considerations for the veteran’s development of the cancer.”
A 100 percent disability rating means that not only will the Veteran receive several tens of thousands of dollars in benefits that the VA owed him on this claim, but he will get almost $4,000 a month into the future. When he passes away, his wife will be taken care of as he had hoped with widow’s benefits.
“The students who worked so hard on this case remind me constantly why it is such a privilege to work with them,” Simcox said. “I hope it also helps them remember that one lawyer can make a difference.”
Post date: Nov. 19, 2019
Media contact: Kate Bradshaw
[email protected] | 727-430-1580