The day my story (below) ran in the Boston Globe, the judge referred the lawsuit for discovery, an early but significant step in the litigation process. Meanwhile, David Evans at Bloomberg News (with the help, no doubt of Paul Sullivan at Veterans for Common Sense) continued to do his own discovery and it wasn't pretty. In September, he reported that the deal between Pru and the VA was sealed with a handshake until last year, when it was finally put in writing, as the law requires, and that beneficiaries will be able to get a real lump sum payment now; i.e. a check, rather than a promise. That development, coming so quickly after the bad press, implies that the VA knew all was not well. Sullivan gave me indications that the VA and Prudential were very cozy, a separate vector that didn't make it into my story because of space limits.
Then, on Halloween (significant?), I got an email from Cristobal Bonifaz, one of the lawyers for the case, with the teaser that something very significant was about to happen, stay tuned.
"Something good?" I emailed back.
"Very good," came the reply.
The next morning, the American Legion, an organization whose 2.5 mil. members should be too numerous to ignore (not to mention that it's the American Legion, for god & country's sake!) filed a friend of the court brief in support of the lawsuit.
Case No. 3:10-CV-30163-MAP in U.S. District Court for Western Massachusetts
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