Hackett Sues Administration

Submitted by staff on Fri, 06/16/2006 - 11:27pm.

CINCINNATI (AP) -- A Cincinnati attorney has filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of 26.5 million veterans whose personal information was on a stolen computer disk.

The suit asks the Department of Veterans Affairs to compensate the veterans and pay for credit monitoring.

Paul Hackett filed the suit yesterday in US District Court in nearby Covington, Kentucky.

Hackett is a Marine reservist who served in Iraq and ran unsuccessfully for Congress last year.

The suit asks the VA to pay damages of at least one-thousand dollars per veteran.

VA officials say the disk stolen from a data analyst's home in early May included Social Security numbers and birth dates, and in many cases phone numbers and addresses.

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Paul is the PLAINTIFF

Submitted by Cookie on Sat, 06/17/2006 - 7:00am.

not the attorney filing the suit. He's suing on behalf of the Vietnam Veterans of America and four other veterans groups for compensation of $1,000 and federally-funded credit monitoring. The attorney who is representing Hackett and the vets is Chris Jenkins of Mezibov & Jenkins, a Cincinnati law firm. Here's the entire class-action complaint which was filed in district court: http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2006/images/05/31/complaint.new.... I'm no lawyer, but I do believe that in a class action suit an attorney cannot be a class representative and cannot collect attorney fees awarded to the class. Paul Hackett is representing this class. He's not going to making millions from this suit, as the repubs would like us to believe.

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Yeah

Submitted by Ohio2nd on Sat, 06/17/2006 - 7:32am.

That jells with what I've heard from Hackett. He told me that he wasn't making a dime off of the suit.

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It's true.

Submitted by Muffet on Sat, 06/17/2006 - 7:54am.

He's simply the representative plaintiff of the class.

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Missing Paul

Submitted by chaine on Sat, 06/17/2006 - 8:26pm.

I first read about this a couple weeks ago. And yes, you do gotta love him.

God bless Sherrod. I hope he wins. I'll vote for him. But there was a sense of loss when Paul dropped out, and if you've followed any of the Senate race so far (if you can even call it that), you'll know exactly what I mean.

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I pray Paul remains politically active!

Submitted by Retired in Ohio on Sat, 06/17/2006 - 8:47pm.

He's a guy who has a lot to contribute to Ohio and this country.

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Sherrod needs to reach out to Paul

Submitted by Todd Hoffman on Sat, 06/17/2006 - 10:16pm.

It's not Hackett's job to reach out to Sherrod. As a former Hackett campaign employee, we were all very disappointed in the way that things went down. You all know the details. But that was the past and right now Sherrod needs to stop ignoring Paul and *try* to get his support. Hackett brings with him the new democratic movement in Ohio, the grassroots and netroots people who are passionate about change and unsatisfied with old Democratic politics. Sherrod needs to reach out to these people, and fast.

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