Legal Aid

53

After having my state aid canceled unexpectedly while I awaited the decision on my Social Security Disability claim, I went to the local Legal Aid office for advice as I otherwise didn't know what else I could do.

When I arrived, the front room of the Legal Aid office was effectively abandoned. There were chairs in the room and an empty receptionist desk. At first I decided she must be away at the restroom or was returning from a late lunch or something and just took a chair and waited. And waited. As I truly had no other clue what to do about the events in my life I saw little other option other than to keep waiting, one time glancing down the hallway behind the receptionist's desk in the hopes of spying someone and getting their attention. But as far as I could see, there was no one, the floor seemed vacant. Was the office closed and they had simply forgotten to lock the front doors? I wondered.

After a bit over an hour of this one of the lawyers entered through the front door and noticed me on the way to the back hall, ''Who are you waiting for?'' I told him that I was here because the state aid office had given me their address and said they could help me with an appeal. Had I called and left a message? No, I had only been given their street address and I assumed I could talk about it with the receptionist when I had gotten here, was she out on lunch? No, they had to let the receptionist go due to budget cuts and people were now supposed to call and leave a message. I didn't know. He gave me their phone number and told me I could use the receptionist's phone to call and he was gone down the hall, then up the stairs at the far back. Picking up the office phone set to line one, I dialed the number and watched the light for line two blink on and off in time with the ringing I heard on the receiver. After about four rings, a box next to the phone I was on started to run a tape and I heard the answering message. After the tone I repeated exactly what I had told the lawyer and left my home phone number. Once done, I hung up the phone in this surreal experience and left the office to rush home and await the return call. Two days later it came and I was given a name and time to come back to the office.

Arriving for my second time, I again took a seat in the empty front room and waited. This time, though, a Legal Aid attorney came to find me there a few minutes after the time I had been given. As she lead me through the hallway behind the receptionist desk and all the empty rooms on this floor, I asked her about it. She explained that it was due to budget cutbacks and the remaining personnel had all moved to the top floor so as not to be bothered by people walking into the office and wondering where the receptionist was.

She lead me up the single flight of stairs and then down the matching hallway to her office. I once again explained my reasons for being here and showed her the denial letter I had gotten from the state aid office, including the copy of the woman doctor's letter. The Legal Aid attorney assumed everything in the doctor's letter must be true and I had to explain to her that, no, it wasn't. I hadn't seen a single dozen doctors in my life, let alone dozens, I had been working right up until last fall when I had to leave due to my health issues, she could check the records at the Social Security office to confirm that, and I had never received any welfare benefits before in my life until these past few months after I could no longer work. The attorney couldn't believe the doctor would have gotten all of it so wrong and asked me where she could have gotten her impressions from. My only guess was the former primary care doctor who had defrauded me the previous fall. The attorney saw that as a separate issue and didn't want to get involved in discussions concerning him and instead asked if she could make a copy of the letter and left to soon return and tell me she would look into it and give me call sometime.

A week later she called me at home and confirmed that they would be taking my case and had scheduled an appeal hearing for the following month. While good news, it was devastating all the same as, without the stipend check, I had to use my bank's over draft protection to pay for my next month's COBRA health insurance payment. With the overdraft was a fee and that fee I had to let fall to my overdraft protection balance, thus incurring additional fees. I momentarily thought about the two club bank accounts that I had access to and their combined couple hundred dollars, but I quickly dismissed it as I was sure the issue with the state aid would soon be cleared up and I'd be receiving back payments to cover this month.

When I arrived at the hearing office the Legal Aid attorney met me outside and was ecstatic. She had found that the law explicitly stated that a doctor must first do an examination before rendering an opinion on someone's fitness for the state aid stipend. She had called the woman doctor and she had confirmed that she had never examined me and so we were going to call her again during the hearing and have her say that on the record. Once done the judge would have no choice but to order the state to disregard her letter and my payments would be resumed. This was great news and I fed off of her excitement as we entered the building and then waited for the hearing room to clear. A representative for the county arrived and we were soon into the empty room with a solitary conference table and no one else. When I asked about the judge, she explained that his office was in Denver and we'd call him up using the speaker phone.

It was actually the county's representative who made the call and the judge told us he started a tape recorder in lieu of a court reporter to transcribe the proceedings. The hearing began with the county attorney paraphrasing directly from the doctor's letter as if it was his own findings that I was a life long welfare fraud who had never worked a day in my life and had seen dozens of doctors who all agreed there was nothing wrong with me. The Legal Aid attorney cited my Social Security records as proof that I had worked near continuously since my teenaged years and that there was no record, nor evidence of me having ever been a welfare fraud. She then asked me three questions: Had I ever seen dozens of doctor's in my life? No. Did I have health issues? I briefly explained my history of weight loss and resulting impact on my life. Was a doctor currently treating me for it? No.

The county representative countered that the woman doctor had seen me for it and the Legal Aid attorney pounced, noting that the woman doctor had never examined me for my health condition and asked to conference her in on the phone to provide testimony to that effect. Permission was granted and the Legal Aid attorney took over control of the speaker phone and dialed the number. The doctor wasn't available right now, we were told, and the attorney told the receptionist of the fact that we were currently in the middle of a hearing and needed to talk to her. We were placed on hold and we waited for about ten minutes until the woman doctor got on the line.

She was briefly informed that we were in the middle of a hearing and would she consent to be sworn in and give truthful testimony. She did. The Legal Aid attorney asked her to confirm that she was the doctor who had sent in the letter to the county's state aid office. She was. Had she ever examined me before sending in the letter to the county's state aid office? Now she became vague, wanting to know what constituted 'an examination', legally. The Legal Aid attorney clarified, had the woman doctor examined me IN ANY WAY before sending off the letter? There was only silence on the line and after a moment the attorney asked if the woman doctor was still there? She was. Had she heard the question? She had. Why hadn't she answered? She assumed the county representative would object to the question. The Legal Aid attorney asked her counterpart if he had any objections to the question. He didn't. The Legal Aid attorney then repeated her question to the woman doctor, HAD SHE EVER EXAMINED ME IN ANY WAY BEFORE SENDING OUT THE LETTER TO THE STATE AID OFFICE?

No, but she didn't have to as she had spoken at length to a doctor who knew all about my case and knew the full details of my degenerate life, frequent sexual escapades, and lack of any true health issues. The Legal Aid attorney objected as all of that was hearsay evidence. The woman doctor countered that it wasn't hearsay as it had been told to her by another doctor. The Legal Aid attorney scoffed in disgust and told her that wasn't how it worked. The woman doctor disagreed and so the Legal Aid attorney asked if the woman doctor had any release form to have been talking to this doctor about me. Well, she must have since she had been doing it. Did she have my file in front of her. Yes. Was there a release form in the file for her to be talking to this unnamed doctor? We heard her flip through pages of a file before she answered, ''It must have gotten misplaced.'' The Legal Aid attorney, smiled.

But the county representative thought of an idea and asked who the doctor was that she had spoken to so we could call his office and have him also join the call and give his direct testimony. The woman doctor was again silent for a while before she answered, ''I'd rather not say.'' The county attorney assured her that it would help to clearly resolve the issues before the judge. After another pause the woman doctor said, she couldn't remember his name.

Effectively the hearing was over and the woman doctor was asked if she had anything else to add. Nope and she was dropped from the call. The Legal Aid attorney summarized that Colorado law required that a doctor must have examined someone before providing information to the state about their fitness for receiving state aid, the woman doctor had affirmed that she hadn't. Anything else she had claimed about me she had admitted was hearsay from a source she either didn't want, or couldn't name, and therefore had no standing. The judge asked if the county representative had anything to add? He didn't and we were done, the speaker phone was hung-up and we were leaving the building. The Legal Aid attorney seemed a little frazzled but was sure we were going to win.

The following week came the judge's decision that we had lost.

(as for what the sexual escapades had been? like everything else that was in the doctor grapevine, I had no clue where it came from or what it was supposed to have referred to...)