{"id":28318,"date":"2016-07-02T14:02:33","date_gmt":"2016-07-02T18:02:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sidebarforplaintiffs.naomifein.net\/?p=28318"},"modified":"2016-07-02T14:02:33","modified_gmt":"2016-07-02T18:02:33","slug":"oh-by-golly-you-are-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sidebarforplaintiffs.naomifein.net\/?p=28318","title":{"rendered":"‘”Oh, by golly, you are dead”‘"},"content":{"rendered":"

Surprising, but I’ve posted a few pieces<\/a> about the living dead,<\/a> i.e., people who have for whatever reasons been dropped <\/a>from official reports of their legal and palpable living-ness. “Whatever reasons”? Maybe I shouldn’t have used that phrase since “reason” does not apply.<\/p>\n

As distressing as this situation might be for real live human beings, it reads as black comedy to some of us. Yes, maybe we’re reprehensible characters for laughing over someone’s similar conundrum but, then, we’re all alive and still on the books for being so.<\/p>\n

So, sorry if you’re offended, but today, from Lowering the Bar, is this little story:<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, by golly, you\u00a0are dead\u201d:<\/strong>\u00a0Better to hear this from\u00a0a Social Security worker than your doctor, I guess:<\/em><\/p>\n

Puzzled, the 73-year-old Lincoln [Nebraska] man called his bank thinking maybe there\u2019d been a computer glitch. U.S. Bank told him to call Mellon Bank, who told him to call his pension administrator, who told him he was dead.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

\u201cAnd I said, \u2018Oh?\u2019 and I got a little concerned,\u201d the retiree said\u2026.<\/p>\n

Eventually, they found the Social Security office, took a number and waited three hours until a friendly woman called his name. \u201cI gave her my passport and my driver\u2019s license and she goes clickety-clickety-click and she says, \u2018Oh, by golly, you\u00a0are<\/em>\u00a0dead,\u2019 and she laughed about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

The dead man laughed, too, but he still didn\u2019t have his money.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

Earlier this year, the Social Security Administration itself<\/a> said an audit found about 12,000 mistakes per year out of 2.5 million death reports. The SSA, of course, focused on what it described as the\u00a0\u201cvery low\u201d error rate (about one-half of one percent), not the absolute\u00a0number, and I\u2019m still trying to decide whether that\u2019s fair or not. You could say, as the agency did, that\u00a0\u201cthere are fewer than 1,000 cases each month in which the agency mistakenly declares a living person is deceased,\u201d or you could say that a living person is mistakenly declared\u00a0dead in the U.S. about once every 45 minutes. I will leave that to you for now. (Source:\u00a0 Lincoln Journal-Star<\/a>;\u00a0see also, e.g.\u00a0 \u201c\u2018No, You\u2019re Still Deceased,\u2019 Judge Tells Dead Man,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0Lowering the Bar\u00a0(Oct. 10, 2013).)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Surprising, but I’ve posted a few pieces about the living dead, i.e., people who have for whatever reasons been dropped from official reports of their legal and palpable living-ness. “Whatever reasons”? Maybe I shouldn’t have used that phrase since “reason” … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[337],"tags":[1076],"class_list":["post-28318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legal-news","tag-declared-legally-dead"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t