Sen. Dan Sullivan, a member of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, welcomed a report Monday that the Department of Justice has begun enforcing caps on the fees trial lawyers can charge in cases representing sick Marines and others impacted by water contamination at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.
The caps, which were announced in September, came after Sen. Sullivan pressed the issue for more than a year in the Senate, and discussed the issue with U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland two weeks prior to the announcement of caps by the DOJ.
On Monday, Bloomberg News reported that the DOJ had begun requesting attorney fee caps be enforced “following the guidelines in Federal Tort Claims Act, which limits attorney fees to 20% for administrative settlements, and 25% for claims resulting from litigation.”
The story highlight’s Sullivan’s role in working with Garland to institute the caps.
“In my eight years in the U.S. Senate, there are few issues I’ve been involved with that more desperately cry out for a just resolution. My Democratic colleagues fought hard to keep attorney’s fees caps out of the Camp Lejeune Justice Act, with the predictable result of unscrupulous trial lawyers trying to grab sixty to seventy percent of the compensation owed to sick Marines and their families, and spending hundreds of millions of dollars to lure Marines into these ultra-high contingency fee arrangements,” said Sen. Sullivan. “I’ve been fighting this injustice tooth and nail for over a year with legislation, unanimous consent requests on the Senate floor, and repeated engagement with the administration. I’m pleased to say, after several productive phone calls, the Attorney General agreed with me and the DOJ is now enforcing these caps.”
Sullivan thanked the U.S. Attorney General for “doing the right thing, and the countless Marines and Veterans Service Organizations (VSOs) who courageously spoke out and demanded Congress and the administration fix this. While this is excellent news for the thousands of Americans who suffered after serving at Camp Lejeune, I am still concerned that the new caps are too high, given the fact that Congress reduced the burden of proof for these cases, making them significantly easier to win. I’ll continue working with my colleagues to advance my Protect Camp Lejeune VETS Act to set these caps at a just and reasonable level and maximize the compensation for the individuals who actually deserve it.”
Marines and impacted individuals can seek compensation as a result of the Camp Lejeune Justice Act, which became law in August 2022 in the larger Honoring our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act. In May 2022, the Biden Justice Department provided technical guidance on the PACT Act, recommending the legislation cap attorney’s fees.
During consideration of the PACT Act, Senate Democrats blocked votes on any amendments, including an amendment to cap legal fees. Since passage of the law, trial lawyers across the country have unleashed over a billion dollars in television ads and social media campaigns, seeking out Marines and other victims for Camp Lejeune-related cases and charging contingency fees reportedly as high as 60 percent.
Is Swampy gonna work to protect everyone, or just Marines?
I’ve become so jaded by his indecipherable positions even when he does something right Im waiting for the other shoe to drop
I wonder how many Alaska Marines asked for his help with this; I think Sullivan’s response is all about “tooting his own horn”.
As an 80% service-disabled Alaska veteran, I have asked twice for his help with the extremely inept and totally unprofessional Anchorage VA Clinic (it’s really nothing more than a fancy CBOC), and have received NO HELP whatsoever. I completed two constituent request forms on two different topics and have heard nothing in response to either. Are you reading this state director Chad Padgett? You have shown yourself to be a total waste of time and should be fired. Alaskans deserve much better from Sullivan and Padgett.
If Swampy really wanted to help vets, not just Marines, he should be leading the charge to either
1-Trash the mostly useless VA
2-Make it easier for vets to take issues to private healthcare providers.
Remember when slick Willy classified area 51 injuries based on national security interests? Those folks died horrible deaths and didn’t get a dime.
Instead of making a show of coming to the defense of US veterans, Dan, how about working to ensure that we have LESS veterans in the future, by keeping the USA out of needless foreign wars? Ah, can’t have that, though!
Jefferson, applause! I would have said the same thing!! Let’s all pop some popcorn while we watch Sully vote for sending our tax dollars to ANOTHER foreign country to pay for their war. Only in THIS case, an estimated 8,000 innocent Palestinian citizens, appx 3,000 of which are kids, have been mercifully put out of their misery by being blown to smithereens in just the past few days!! It shouldn’t take much longer to wipe the entire population of Palestinians off the face of the planet, so that Israel can FINALLY have the Gaza Strip all to itself. And if we American tax payers fund the genocide, then we can sleep better because we brought stability and democracy to the region. Go Sully Go!
Imagine a group of people who would use their children and their neighbors children as human shields. Imagine a group of people who murder, rape, torture, kidnap, burn, and behead innocent children, women, and the elderly simply because of the circumstances of their birth. Unfortunately we don’t have to imagine it because they exist and they are a known terrorist organization called Hamas. Now imagine what depravity it takes to defend those people and their actions, what depravity it takes to stand on the sidelines and cheer those atrocities, what depravity it takes to remain silent in the face of such evil. Unfortunately we don’t have to imagine that either because we are surrounded by such people. They are called antisemites, Jew haters, Nazi’s, and Nazi sympathizers…they are our neighbors and some of them even post comments here on MRAK.
Delusional: characterized by or holding false beliefs or judgments about external reality that are held despite incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, typically as a symptom of a mental condition.
Ad Hominem Attack: attacking an opponent’s character or motives rather than answering the argument or claim.
What a remarkable ability to parrot without even a thought as to what the words being parroted actually mean, uncanny really.
(yawn)
Only problem with this, cute as it is, is it lacks a couple things. Pesky things like supporting facts.
If, indeed, Israel had done what you claim, it would be front page of every paper and news website on Earth.
Yet somehow, it isn’t.
You are entitled to your personal opinions. You are not entitled to personalize facts. Facts, as John Adams famously said, are stubborn things.
There’s always going to be wars, and always going to be people begging us for help. We will respond if they have something we need or want.
Interesting how desperate some people are to turn every thing into a middle east commentary.
Swampy is doing something to attempt to help US Marines. It has as much to do with Israel, Jews, or bluebirds over the ocean as shells on the beach do with traffic on C Street.
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