Efforts continue to get back benefits for former Eric Conn clients. New ruling could help.

April 01-- Apr. 1--Attorneys have renewed efforts to restore Social Security disability benefits for several hundred people in Eastern Kentucky who lost them as a result of the largest fraud in the history of the agency.

The attorneys filed a motion Sunday asking a judge to lift a stay that has blocked request to restore benefits.

The Social Security Administration had successfully sought the stay while trying to overturn an appeals court ruling.

That decision said the agency used an improper process to cut off disability benefits to former clients of disbarred attorney Eric C. Conn.

The U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals last week turned down the agency's request for a re-hearing of the earlier decision.

The ruling was an important step in the fight to get back disability checks for about 800 people, said Prestonsburg attorney Ned Pillersdorf, who has represented former clients of Conn's.

"It's likely these 800 people may be getting their benefits back sooner rather than later," Pillersdorf said.

Conn's former clients lost benefits because of his fraudulent conduct.

Conn, of Pikeville, was once one of the most prolific Social Security disability lawyers in the country, handling successful claims for thousands of people.

His lucrative practice crashed down after authorities began investigating his relationship with David B. Daugherty, a Social Security judge who handled appeals of cases in which people had been denied disability benefits.

Conn pleaded guilty in 2017 to federal charges, admitting he staffers filled out evaluations that medical professionals signed without doing adequate examinations.

Conn also admitted paying more than $600,000 in bribes to Daugherty to approve thousands of claims.

Conn is serving a 27-year sentence. Daugherty received a four-year sentence, and a Pikeville psychologist convicted in the scheme, Bradley Adkins, is serving 25 years.

When Social Security has reason to believe fraud was involved in awarding benefits, it conducts a re-determination of whether a beneficiary is eligible.

In that process, the agency's practice has been to toss out suspected fraudulent evidence.

Social Security barred Conn's former clients from using evidence from three physicians and a psychologist who allegedly signed evaluation forms for Conn without doing proper exams.

That made it harder for them to prove they were eligible for disability benefits, even though their attorneys have argued authorities have presented no evidence that Conn's clients were involved in the fraud or even knew about it.

The appeals court ruled last year that it was wrong for Social Security to bar all evidence from the four medical professionals without giving Conn's former clients a chance to argue that some of it was not fake.

That violated the beneficiaries' constitutional rights, the court said.

The decision applied to a round of re-determinations involving nearly 1,800 former clients of Conn that started in 2015, in which about 800 people lost benefits.

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