White House Press Release, Message of President Harry S. Truman to the United States House of Representatives

98 1548 HOLD FOR RELEASE HOLD FOR RELEASE HOLD FOR RELEASE MARCH 22, 1948 CONFIDENTIAL To be held in STRICT CONFIDENCE and no portion, synopsis or intimation to be given out or published until the READING of the President's Message has begun- in the House of Representatives. Extreme care must therefore be exercised to avoid premature publication. CHARLES G., ROSS Secretary to the President Jilened TO THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES: I am returning without my approval H. R. 2012, a bill "For the relief of Mrs. Pearl Cole." The bill would require the Bureau of Employees' Compensation of the Federal Security Agency, notwithstanding the statutory one-year time limit for the filing of a death claim specified in the Federal Employees' Compensation Act for this type of case, to consider on its merits any claim that may be filed within six months after enactment of the present measure by Mrs. Pearl Cole for compensation on account of the death of her husband, Jesse T. Cole, whose death in August 1936 is alleged to have been a result of injuries received on June 10, 1931, in the per- formance of his duty as a letter carrier in the civil service of the United States. No benefits are to accrue prior to approval of this measure, It appears from the records of the Federal Security Agency that Mr. Cole suffered fractures of his left arm and abrasions of the left hand on June 10, 1931, when he lost control of an automobile. His recovery was uneventful and he returned to his usual employment on September 10, 1931. He filed a claim under the Federal Employees' Compensation Act, which was approved, and received compensation benefits for the period ending Septem- ber 9, 1931, in the sum of $133.61. Payments of $304 were also made out of the compensation fund for medical and transportation expenses. No application for review of the award or additional claim was ever made in his lifetime. He was involuntarily retired for economy reasons in 1933. On August 5, 1936, he died. Since Mr. Cole had drawn disability compensation in his lifetime, his widow presumably was aware that if his death had in fact resulted from the injury she might be entitled to compensation. Yet no claim on account of such death was filed within the one-year period of limitation estab- lished by the statute and the widow did not apprise the compensation agency of her husband's death until October 28, 1940, more than four years after such death. In 1945, the Compensation Act was amended so as to permit the compensation agency to waive compliance with the one-year time limit, for death claims filed within five years after the employee's death, but only if the failure to comply was due to circumstances beyond the claimant's control, or if the claimant has shown "sufficient cause or reason in explanation thereof," and material prejudice to the interest of the United States has not resulted from such failure. Congress did not choose to make that amendment retroactive, to deaths from injuries occurring before Decem- ber 7, 1940, and hence it could not as such avail Mrs. Cole. But if the principles laid down in the 1945 amendment be used as a yardstick for determining whether a special legislative waiver is justified in this case, the showing made by Mrs. Cole appears to fall hopelessly short of the requirements. There is nothing in the files of the Federal Security Agency or in the documents appended to the committee reports on H. R. 2012 that even hints that her failure to file a claim within one year was due to circumstances beyond her control or other reasonable cause. Moreover, it is probable that to submit the case to the Agency now would be futile or would tend to cause material prejudice to the interest of the United States. This is so because of the difficulty of determining whether a death which happened more than eleven years ago resulted from an injury occurring over sixteen years ago, when no lasting disability was brought to the compensation agency's attention in the decedent's lifetime and even the most favorable medical opinion produced merely ventures that the accident "could have been" one of the causes of the heart disease from which he died. (OVER)