Dave Pear's Blog

Dave sure gets some interesting phone calls. Remember the gunshot call just before Gene Upshaw left the scene? (Read that post by clicking HERE.) We’re happy to say those kinds of calls have stopped.

But with the letter-writing campaign to AON Corp. and its CEO Gregory Case, it’s been lots and lots of correspondence. (Click HERE to read the original letter that started it all.) We’ve probably been responsible for killing a small forest. Dave’s been getting letters from pretty much everyone EXCEPT Mr. Case and their attorneys; instead, they’ve taken to writing everyone else except Dave, including the Attorneys General of Washington, New York and Connecticut, among others. Why, Dave even got a letter from Larry Lamade of Akin Gump, the NFL’s attorneys. Everyone writes letters and it creates a great paper trail so everyone knows what’s going on.

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Wow! What’s a poor guy have to do just to get one straight answer around here?

When Dave sent of that letter to AON Corp. President/CEO Gregory Case (click HERE to read that post), we also made sure to CC: copies to several state Attorneys General as well as state Insurance Commissioners who may have direct or indirect jurisdiction over such matters. The responses are still coming in and one of the more interesting ones came from Connecticut State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal (click HERE to read his letter) who stated, “I agree with you that you should have received a copy of your disability policy describing the benefits and obligations that pertain to beneficiaries.”

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Here are the latest updates from our ongoing inquiry into Dave’s Death Benefit saga (click HERE to read the original story and some more HERE.):

We received a response at the end of October from the Connecticut Commissioner of Insurance directing us to contact the US Dept. of Labor. (As always, click on an image to enlarge it for easier reading.)

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A week-and-a-half after sending out 13 letters to AON Corp. CEO Gregory Case and a long list of CC:’s, the US Postal Service has confirmed that the letters have all been delivered. (Click HERE to read the original letter.)

It was also pointed out to us that AON had been busted in Connecticut during that bid-rigging fiasco in 2005 and we didn’t want Connecticut to feel left out. So late last week, we sent out copies of the letter to the Connecticut Attorney General and their Insurance Commissioner. Three additional copies of the letter to AON were sent to Congressman John Conyers and Congresswomen Maxine Waters and Linda Sanchez (you may remember them from their leadership in the congressional NFL hearings).

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Over the summer, the NFLPA offered a 4-month window for retired disabled players to apply or re-apply for their benefits. As many of you know, I was eventually approved for Inactive T&P (Total & Permanent) Disability benefits (but not Football Degenerative T&P benefits). We’re still continuing to file our objections to the Review Board over my original disqualification since 1983. (You can read more about this by clicking HERE and HERE.)

After a lot of foot-dragging, NFLPA Benefits Director, Paul Scott, finally sent me a letter alluding to a “Death Benefit” that many of us had apparently signed up for years ago when we took retirement. This benefit is supposed to provide those meager benefits to our surviving spouses when we die. (Read Paul Scott’s letter to me HERE.) But in spite of years and years of taking unitemized deductions for this “benefit” and even going as far as to hire AON to work out the actuarial factors for each of the players, I can’t seem to find anyone who has so much as looked at a policy or document that spells out the terms of this “benefit.”

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