PRESTONSBURG, Ky. (LEX 18) — Ned Pillersdorf – and his team of pro bono attorneys - worked for about six years on the class action lawsuit they ultimately won for their clients. The last 10 months since winning their case have been much more challenging.
“I think what’s happened is these people are so conditioned of being suspicious of anything doing with the SSA (Social Security Administration) they’re just not responding,” Mr. Pillersdorf said from his office in Floyd County.
Pillersdorf will meet on Thursday at 3 p.m. inside the Old Floyd County Courthouse to find some clients he calls “the forgotten 500.” That’s a group of clients he represented in their case against the SSA after attorney Eric C. Conn scammed them out of hundreds of millions of dollars over many years. They’re all eligible now to have those benefits reinstated, not to mention an entitlement of back pay that Pillersdorf said could be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to each client.
“It’s heartbreaking that we’ve helped 500 people, and only 100 have taken advantage,” he said.
He hopes Thursday’s meeting will help spread the word to those who either haven’t gotten it, or have been ignoring it.
“How do we communicate with them? We don’t know who they are,” Pillersdorf said of the unknown beneficiaries.
“If I had to do it all over again, we should’ve pushed harder, as part of the settlement agreement, that we notify the clients (rather than the SSA handling that).
Mr. Pillersdorf calls this “the most significant settlement of his career,” it’s frustrating that those for whom his team fought aren’t taking advantage of the winning terms.
“These are the people that myself and the volunteer network of lawyers are most worried about,” he said because he knows they’ve been without their benefits for so long.
