Thursday, December 31, 2009

What Does Frank Cummings Know And When Did He Know It?

April 14, 1998
3801 Connecticut Avenue, NW
#136
Washington, DC 20008-4530

Frank Cummings, Esq.
LeBoeuf, Lamb, Leiby & MacRae
1875 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Suite 1200
Washington, DC 20009

RE: Leboeuf, Lamb, Leiby & MacRae Employment Inquiry - Homicide/Violence Risk

Dear Mr. Cummings:

I am writing to assure the law firm of Leboeuf, Lamb, Leiby & MacRae that at the time of my employment inquiry in 1985, to which Hiring Partner Austin P. Olney, Esq. responded by letter dated March 5, 1985 (copy attached), I did not intentionally withhold any facts pertinent to my current mental illness: an apparently rare form of paranoid schizophrenia--a debilitating psychotic disorder--that has left my intellectual functioning intact even as the illness worsens in severity, and which disorder cannot be detected on comprehensive psychological testing as performed by a major medical center (The George Washington University Medical Center).

As a courtesy to Leboeuf, Lamb, Leiby & MacRae I forward (on the enclosed computer disc) two pleadings that I filed in the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, in a currently pending appeal, that will satisfy any questions you or your partners may have concerning the risk of violence (including armed violence and homicide) to which I unintentionally subjected your firm. The disc also contains a document pertinent to a criminal investigation instituted by the Federal Protective Service (Jerry McGill, S.A.), ancillary to concerns, affirmed as genuine by the Government of the District of Columbia, relating to a reported risk of violence (including homicide) that I posed at the law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, my former employer.

I know that you are a nationally-recognized expert in employment discrimination law. You may have an academic interest in precisely how an individual diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, a disabling psychotic mental disorder, might go about applying the law of employment discrimination to the facts relating to a job termination.

Supervisory Special Agent David M. Bowie at the Washington Field Office of the FBI is familiar with this matter. The telephone number of the FBI Washington Field Office is 252-7801.

Sincerely,

Gary Freedman

1 comment:

My Daily Struggles said...

FRANK CUMMINGS is a Washington DC lawyer, law professor, and occasional expert witness. He has been a specialist in pensions, employee benefits, employment and labor law for over 45 years. Cummings is a graduate of Columbia University Law School (LL.B. 1958), where he was Articles Editor of the Columbia Law Review and a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar. He also earned a Master's Degree in Philosophy from Columbia University (M.A. 1955). He is a member of the District of Columbia and New York bars.

He practiced law for many years at LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene and MacRae, LLP (former partner and head of the benefits practice group) (now Dewey + LeBoeuf, LLP) and with several other firms in New York and Washington. Previously he served as Minority Counsel for the U.S. Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources and was Administrative Assistant/Chief of Staff to U.S. Senator Jacob K. Javits during the development of ERISA. He designed and drafted the original Javits pension reform bill (1967), which was the first of Senator Javits' proposals that eventually became ERISA.


He has testified as an employee benefits expert at the invitation of the Chairs of various Congressional committees, including the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee in 1973 hearings before enactment of ERISA, the U.S. House Committee on Economic and Educational Opportunities (1995 and 1999) in hearings on ERISA amendments, the U.S. Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee (1995) in hearings on ERISA amendments, and the Subcommittee on Employer-Employee Relations of the Committee on Economic and Educational Opportunities, U.S. House of Representatives (1996) also on ERISA amendments, and at the invitation of the Chair of the U.S. Department of Labor's Advisory Committee on Employee Welfare and Pension Benefit Plans, Working Group on Challenges to the Employment-Based Health Care System.


He is currently an Adjunct Professor of Law at New York University Law School and an Adjunct Lecturer in Law at the University of Virginia School of Law (Charlottesville, VA), where, in each case, he teaches courses in pension and health benefit law. He is a member of the American Law Institute (and a member of its panel of Advisors on the new Restatement of Employment Law), a member of the Advisory Board of the BNA Pension Reporter, and a Fellow of the American College of Employee Benefits Counsel. He is a former member of the U.S. Department of Labor's Advisory Council on Employee Welfare and Pension Benefit Plans.


Cummings is the author of numerous publications in the employee benefits field, including a BNA Tax Management Portfolio, Pension Plan Terminations--Single Employer Plans (TM357-4th-2002) (4th Ed. 2007). He is a frequent lecturer on employee benefits, ERISA litigation, labor and employment law in courses given by the American Law Institute-American Bar Association Committee on Continuing Professional Education, and for many years as Chairman of the ALI-ABA Annual Course in Employee Benefits Litigation, and Co-Chairman of the ALI-ABA Annual Course in Employment and Labor Law. He is listed in Who's Who in America.