Legal Question in Military Law in Pennsylvania

Upgrade a General Discharge

was a navy Lt and ended up resigning. Qucik background was I blew my knee out went to medical had an mri and found out that i needed surgery. Doc would not give me a down chit. Command CO gave me an order not pursue surgery and ended up giving me orders to iraq. i went to training and was not able to complete. I was harrased every day by the OIC of our det. When I said that I was thinking of resigning then my command performed an investagation on me. I was not told what I did. They wanted me to go to mast, I refused, and requested CM. Then they said if i resign it would go away. I resigned. I recieved a general under honorable with misconduct as a service code character. I was treated very unjust. Also what does something like this cost


Asked on 4/01/08, 3:59 pm

2 Answers from Attorneys

John K. Harris Attorney at Law

Re: Upgrade a General Discharge

You should have an attorney help you. Feel free to contact me.

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Answered on 4/02/08, 10:11 am
Donald G. Rehkopf, Jr. Brenna, Brenna & Boyce, PLLC

Re: Upgrade a General Discharge

If they wanted you to go to a Mast, then you should have received some paperwork alleging what it was that they were accusing you of. You would have had to sign off on the paperwork for the Mast and demanding a court-martial.

You should have had a military defense counsel detailed to represent you. If you did not, then that is a separate issue which MIGHT help you. It "appears" but without reviewing the paperwork of your resignation, is that you resigned "in lieu of" a court-martial, which is how they were able to to give you a General Discharge (under honorable conditions), and alleging "misconduct." The reality is that you should have gone to a Medical Board based upon your knee injury and they didn't want to processs it as a medical, because then you might have been [and still might be] eligible for a disability rating IF the injury happened while on active duty and in the line of duty or not due to your own misconduct.

Without more detail, it is not possible to even give you a rough estimation of what this MIGHT cost, as any competent (and ethical) attorney would first need to review all of the documentation involved and assess the options to get you corrective relief.

Time is money, so the more documentation that you have, will save time, and thus fees. But, if time must be spent trying to obtain documents [which will mysteriously probably be missing], then obviously it is going to cost more.

If you would like to discuss this in more detail, please contact me privately as this forum does not protect your attorney-client privilege rights as it is "open" to the public. Email me at [email protected] .

In any event, good luck and I hope that this helps you.

Regards,

Don Rehkopf

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Answered on 4/01/08, 4:42 pm


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