Douglas Rosinski - Knol: a unit of knowledge

Douglas Rosinski

Attorney at Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart, P.C.

Columbia, South Carolina

I am an attorney and currently Of Counsel (a senior lawyer) at the national law firm of Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart, P.C., with offices in Columbia, South Carolina and Washington, D.C. In addition to a growing veterans' practice, my “day job” is practicing complex federal litigation, nuclear and federal energy regulation, and employment law. In my past life, I have been a nuclear energy startup engineer, a technical management consultant, and started up and managed a robotics research and development company that designed technology for NASA. More recently, I have been an Adjunct Professor at the South Carolina School of Law where I taught a Veterans’ Advocacy Seminar and legal clinic.

My veterans’ practice started as a way for me to apply my training as a regulatory lawyer to an area of which I had been told needed some volunteer lawyers. I had no idea at the time of how desperately the veterans’ community was in need of legal resources. My first case was an appeal by a WWII veteran’s spouse seeking payment of 47 years of accrued benefits that VA awarded but would not pay because the veteran died after the award, but before the check was written. That case, Bonny v. Principi, took over two and a half years to resolve, but Mrs. Bonny got her well-deserved benefits. It also revealed to me how far the VA will go to avoid paying legitimate claims and how important an attorney can be in obtaining a fair resolution of even simple cases.

I now represent between one to two dozen veterans and survivors at any one time. Although my primary focus is on cases at the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims, I also take on compelling cases at the Board of Veterans’ Appeals and the VA Regional Office level. Currently, I am also litigating a Privacy Act action against the VA for losing the personal information of millions of veterans, family members, and active duty personnel that was improperly stored on a lost laptop computer. I understand that I have some negative reputation within the highest levels of VA as being a pain – and am very proud of it.

During my military service, I was a submariner, earning both silver (enlisted) and gold (officer) dolphins. I was a qualified diving officer on the USS Will Rogers (SSBN 659), fully qualified on USS Memphis (SSN 691) and as a nuclear Engineer Officer. I am admitted in Georgia, South Carolina, and the District of Columbia, corresponding federal jurisdictions, the Court of Claims, the Federal Circuit, Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims, and the United States Supreme Court. I am also a member of American Nuclear Society, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and American Bar Association.

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