Stillbirth: Will there be a class action law suit?
from KotaPress

Last month, the Indy Star newspaper published two articles about a bereaved family who was seeking a way to force their insurance carrier to pay the death benefit claim they filed for their stillborn son. The articles said that the couple, Michael & Christine Warnock, and their lawyer Charleen Gabrielle had filed suit against the government for breach of contract on Michael's Prudential Life Insurance death benefit claim. Michael is an Air Force reservist, so the suit is against both the federal Office of Servicemembers' Group Life Insurance and Prudential Life Insurance Co.

When their son Joshua was born still, they incurred many expenses that other stillbirth families will find all too familiar. It was $6,000 for Joshua's funeral alone. The claim was filed for $10,000 to cover the funeral, burial, and other expenses. Most interestingly, the article also mentioned the possibility of a class action law suit -- which I think is most appropriate since, as I said, there are far too many other families who clearly understand the unexpected expenses that come with the birth & death of our children!

We called the Indy Star and asked for permissions to re-print the articles in full here, but the denied our request because we are online, not in-print. (There's an antiquated rule for you!) But we can offer the links to those articles here -- keep in mind that 30 days after they originally posted, their librarians will be forced to take them off-line, so they won't work forever:

http://www.indystar.com/print/articles/2/076655-4312-009.html

http://www.indystar.com/print/articles/5/075937-2955-127.html

We also put a call into Charleen Gabrielle the Warnock's lawyer and asked if she'd be willing to keep in touch with us. She said if anything more develops with the class action suit, she will be in touch, and she invited us to check in as we want/need. Many thanks to her for her cooperation on spreading the news about this story.

And we have several members in our online group from the Indy Star area, and we've asked them to keep their eyes peeled for more news, too. So stay tuned. This could be a very important case for families of stillborn children!!

If you want to surf thru the Indy Star yourself, now and again, to search for info about this story, you can see their main site here: http://www.indystar.com

And we'll do our best to keep everyone updated via this Loss Journal and through the KotaPress online eNewsletter. If you want to subscribe to that eNewsletter today, just click here...

   
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