The Indiana Prosecuting Attorneys Council, together with the Marion County Prosecutor’s Office, hosted a regional opioid training event on October 10. The free training was put on by the National District Attorneys Association and is one of eight NDAA trainings across the country. These types are trainings are crucial for prosecutors as they continue to fight drug use in their communities.

The training, which was attended by prosecutors and law enforcement officers from Indiana, Michigan and Ohio, was an opportunity to learn more about the source of addiction and hear what others are doing in their communities to combat the drug issue.

Jay Ruais, from the Addiction Policy Forum, said that the drug epidemic is hard to get a handle on because when states and law enforcement focus on one specific drug, people start abusing a different drug.

“It’s almost like squeezing a balloon,” Ruais said. “You really get a grip on one side of it and the other side pops up.”

Even among Indiana communities, the drugs prosecutors see most often varies from county to county. Some are dealing with methamphetamines or opioids, while in other counties, heroin charges are more prevalent.

Throughout the day-long training, attendees heard about success stories from across the nation, learned about the science behind what causes addiction and talked about different options to combat and prevent drug abuse. Attendees also heard a presentation from Dr. Leslie Ann Hulvershorn from the Indiana University School of Medicine, an expert on psychiatry, specifically child and adolescent psychiatry. Dr. Hulvershorn and Chase LyDay, a school resource officer from Indianapolis, highlighted the importance of preventing drug abuse among children. When drug abuse begins while the brain is still developing, the abuser is much more like to develop an addiction.

The training was funded by the Addiction Policy Leadership Action Network.

Dave Stafford for www.theindianalawyer.com

Attorneys who successfully represented two clients seeking Social Security disability benefits won’t get paid, the 7^th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled, because their indigent clients owed debts to the federal treasury.

Ruling jointly on two Indiana cases posing the same question, the appellate panel affirmed district court rulings that withheld attorney fees for the de la Torre Law Office LLC. The cases are Staci Harrington v. Nancy A. Berryhill, 17-3179, and Andrew Banks v. Nancy A. Berryhill, 17-3194.

The firm represented Banks and Harrington beginning in 2014, who were both initially denied benefits but who prevailed on judicial review of Social Security’s administrative decision. The firm then was awarded $11,001 in fees in Banks’ case and $11,851 in Harrington’s, as provided by the Equal Access to Justice Act.

But when Social Security submitted payment vouchers to the Treasury Department, it claimed the awards of fees as a payment intercept or offset allowed by the Debt Collection Improvement Act of 1996 (“DCIA”), 31 U.S.C. § 3716. Banks had been delinquent on child support in Allen County, and Harrington had an outstanding debt to the Department of Education that exceeded the sum of her attorney fees. The award of legal fees instead was applied toward those debts.

Both plaintiffs appealed, asking the 7^th Circuit “to do what the district courts would not do: compel the government to reverse Treasury’s administrative offsets, reinstate their prior debts, and pay their lawyers.” But the panel declined.

Judge Michael S. Kanne wrote for the panel that found the district courts properly awarded attorney fees, but didn’t wade into broader questions the cases pose.

“…(W)e hold that a reduction of a litigant’s prior debts to the government by administrative offset constitutes payment to the prevailing party under EAJA,” Kanne wrote.

The panel declined to exercise ancillary jurisdiction to reach a determination on whether the offset was lawful or constitutional. “A new suit under the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”), 5 U.S.C. § 701 et seq., is the proper vehicle for this litigation,” it found.

“We stress that our decision today indicates no opinion on the merits of the various legal theories the plaintiffs have proposed to us. These are important questions that deserve their day in court. In particular, we sympathize with the practical effects that administrative offsets have on the ability of indigent petitioners to bring meritorious lawsuits before federal courts,” Kanne wrote. “… Nevertheless, Justice Sotomayor and her colleagues determined that regardless of the policy outcomes, the text of the law clearly required upholding the offsets. They left questions of policy to Congress.

“… Another court sitting under another statutory grant of jurisdiction may determine that some provision of the Constitution or a statute forbids administrative offsets of EAJA awards. But this case is not a suitable vehicle in which to assess those questions, and we will not do so,” the panel concluded.