Court Criticizes Botch of Benefits but Fails to Help

NEW ORLEANS — Although criticizing what it deemed bureaucratic bungling, the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals said Monday that it was powerless to help a Texas woman who lost $1,100 because of bad advice from Social Security Administration employees.

“This case is an example of how the government’s brain often fails to control the movement of its fingers,” the court said in an opinion written by Judge E. Grady Jolly.

In May, 1983, Marie B. Jones of Dallas called the Social Security Administration to see whether she could receive early retirement benefits and later use her former husband’s work records as a basis for higher benefits, the court said. Jones, who was 62 at the time she called for advice, was told that if she accepted benefits based on her own work record, she would be barred from receiving the larger, divorced-spouse benefits when she reached 65.

“This information was incorrect,” the court said Monday.

Jones’ sister, Clarice Soven, made a similar telephone call and got the same erroneous advice, the court said.

Told She Filed To Late

In October, 1984, after she filed for benefits based on her husband’s work record, Jones was told that she could have received $1,100 of early retirement benefits, had she filed in 1983.

The sisters began attempting to collect the $1,100, appealing through the Social Security system, the courts, and writing to their senator and to the secretary of health and human services.

But their efforts went virtually for naught, as Jones lost in a district court in Texas. She appealed but was told Monday that the three-judge panel could not help her.

“Although it is clear that under relevant case law Mrs. Jones’ claim must be dismissed, we are very sympathetic with her plight,” Jolly wrote. “She has been misled and unjustifiably denied her rightful benefits at a time when she seriously needed funds. . . .

“Such is life in the post-1984 Orwellian bureaucracy.”