An editorial from The Herald-Dispatch
HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — In 2013, the U.S. Senate released a report on Social Security disability insurance practices in our region that highlighted long-running potential abuse.
The title of the 161-page report said it all – “How Some Legal, Medical and Judicial Professionals Abused Social Security Disability Programs for the Country’s Most Vulnerable: A Case Study of the Conn Law Firm.”
The numbers were staggering.
Congressional investigators found that a Social Security administrative law judge in Huntington, David Daugherty, had handled a huge volume of cases from a single attorney out of Stanville, Ky., Eric Conn. In almost 100 percent of those cases, Daugherty found for Conn’s clients, and between 2005 and 2011, the judge awarded an estimated $2.5 billion in lifetime benefits to those clients. Meanwhile, the Social Security Administration had paid out more than $4.5 million to Conn in attorney fees for handling the cases.
But in some cases the wheels of justice turn slowly…