After serving in battle, soldiers have a fighter in court

After serving in battle, soldiers have a fighter in court

Posted by Bob Braun September 24, 2008 11:58PM
Categories: Hot Topics
Bill Greenberg is a corporate litigator, a full partner in the premier, 160-year-old New Jersey firm of McCarter & English, a man who has worked for governors and trades jokes with Supreme Court justices.

He would fit most definitions of a "white shoe lawyer," an attorney at the top of his profession. But he prefers Army boots to white shoes.

Despite the trademark and unmilitary shock of hair that flops across his forehead, Greenberg, 65, is a retired Army brigadier general. The Princeton resident has devoted much of his professional time lately, not to billable hours, but to serving wounded soldiers and their families for free.


"They are victims of an antiquated system that should change, and change soon," says Greenberg.

The system he wants to take down is the military's procedure for dealing with wounded and injured soldiers after they have been treated medically. Greenberg calls it "an outrage; the whole system is wrong."

He has become more familiar with the system through his leadership of a state bar association effort to recruit New Jersey lawyers to work for free for reservists and National Guard members who have served in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The lawyers represent soldiers in all cases -- matrimonial, foreclosure, contracts -- but Greenberg has carved out a own specialty. Representing the wounded.

He's not talking about medical care. Greenberg is out to change the procedures for classifying wounded and injured service members, determining whether they are fit for continued service and, if not, establishing what level of disability they suffered.

"You start with a system that is overwhelmed in terms of personnel," says the lawyer, who travels frequently to Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, D.C., for disability hearings.

"There simply are not enough people available to help these soldiers."

Greenberg won't criticize military personnel. He insists the people assigned to help soldiers and keep the system going "are doing the best they can."

His solution is simple: Get rid of it. Replace it with procedures aimed at keeping even disabled soldiers in the military, if they wish to stay and are capable of working. Soldiers who are unfit, he says, should all be considered completely disabled.

The current system, he says, is not unlike state workers' compensation programs, established so employees were not forced to sue their employers for on-the-job injuries. But it first begins with a designation of wounded soldiers as fit or unfit to return to service, a process that could take months after they are treated for their injuries.

Greenberg wants the military to keep as many disabled members employed in the service as it can.

"If you take an oath to serve your country, then the military has an obligation to keep you if you want to stay. There are many jobs disabled soldiers could do in the service. Blind soldiers can answer telephones. If you have only one leg, you can still teach and train recruits."

After the question of fitness is determined, wounded soldiers now are evaluated at military hospital centers, including Walter Reed. As in workers' compensation cases, there is a hearing, but before a panel of three officers, rather than one workers' compensation judge.

Using tables that link the percentage of payments to specific loss of limbs or function, Greenberg says, the panel determines what percentage of disability each wounded service member has. That determines future payments.

"That, too, is wrong," he says, arguing that soldiers unfit for duty should automatically receive the maximum benefit.

Among the problems, he says, is the availability of legal representation. Many soldiers go into the hearings on their own and settle for whatever the panel decides.

"I have represented 20 or 25 soldiers and they have received the maximum they could. That doesn't happen with unrepresented soldiers."

He said the system puts the burden of proof of the extent of disability on soldiers who are eager simply to get on with their lives.

"We are not treating our citizen soldiers well," says Greenberg. "As a matter of contract, a matter of constitutional law and as a matter of conscience, we have to get rid of this system."

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