Testimony Ends in VA Document Inquiry but Judge Delays Decision on Contempt

Testimony ended Friday in a federal court investigation of allegations that the Veterans Administration improperly destroyed or withheld documents sought in a class-action lawsuit, but a decision in the matter was postponed.

U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel said she will not decide whether to make a contempt finding against the government until she can further study the legal theories involved. She asked lawyers to submit written summaries of the case by Dec. 19, and tentatively asked them to return for final oral arguments Jan. 5.

The case has grown out of a class-action lawsuit alleging that the Veterans Administration has failed to adequately judge the disability claims of men who were exposed to ionizing radiation during open-air atomic bomb tests or while serving as occupation troops in the atomic-bombed Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after World War II.

Charges of document destruction arose in two anonymous letters sent to the lawyer representing the so-called “atomic veterans,” Gordon P. Erspamer of San Francisco. Three VA employees this week said under oath that parts of the letters were accurate, but other VA officials flatly denied the charges they contained.

Erspamer is seeking internal quality-control surveys and trouble-shooting memoranda to bolster his argument that the agency’s current informal-style arbitration of atomic veterans’ claims almost always denies benefits to the stricken veterans.

Erspamer’s suit, which he is pressing without charge on behalf of 5,000 of the estimated 250,000 atomic vets, seeks to overturn a Civil War-era limit of $10 on the amount a veteran can pay a lawyer to represent him before the VA.