The Supreme Court has granted a writ of certiorari in the case of Astrue v. Ratliff. This means that the Supreme Court will hear the case. The issue is "Whether an 'award of fees and other expenses' under the Equal Access to Justice Act, is payable to the 'prevailing party' rather than to the prevailing party’s attorney, and therefore is subject to an offset for a pre-existing debt owed by the prevailing party to the United States."
3 comments:
SSA is basically helping the attorney collect his fees by paying them directly to the attorney. A debt owed to the federal government would seem to be a higher priority claim. No one else, such as landlords, utilities, etc. get to have the money owed to them taken out of the person's back pay.
I hope people can see how this will impact Judicial Review of the SSA. If EAJA fees are allowed to continue to be offset, disability claimants with bad debt will not be afforded their day in court. Ultimately this is one more hat trick being pulled by the government to disadvantage the poor and disabled.
Au contraire my dears. EAJA regulations are in place so that plaintiffs who would not normally have any chance of a day in court (read poor, disabled, disenfranchised) can actually get a lawyer to take the case. By the way (having worked on EAJA cases in another life) the money paid in EAJA cases is never the main objective of the attorney. There is no amount of money that could compensate one for the work done on these cases. Nor could the money ever be equal to winning a victory for someone who has been victimized by the system virtually since birth.
Alice
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