2 beach buddies leads to a health-care settlment

Retired Beacon Journal printer Gina White, wife of former Composing honcho Dave White, explains how the ball got rolling that led to the BJ signing a settlement to restore health care costs to retirement day levels, or better, for printers who retired in 1992 or earlier and for Guild retirees who left the BJ in 1997 or earlier.

The Whites live in Venice, Florida after residing for a couple of decades in Sarasota, not all that far from where the late printer Bill Gorrell had his Siesta Key rentals just off the beach where Dave worked at Island House Condominium on Crescent Beach.

Gina's email:

Dave met Lou Smith at the Island House Condominium in the early 90's where he was working as grounds manager. Lou was a condo owner and every year when he would come down, he and Dave would mess around together.

So now, every year at Christmas, we send Lou several bottles of 1905 salad dressing from the Columbia Restaurant at St. Armand's and he sends a pointsettia.

When we needed an attorney's advice and help on the lawsuit, we called Lou to see if anything could be done. He referred us to his "labor law" expert, Allen Anderson. This was in 2005 when the BJ first started messing with us. Of course, there was nothing that we could do then.

Then 4 years ago, in another conversation with Allen, he informed us that there had been some judgments in these type of cases that might be favorable to us.

And, then you know the rest of the story.

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Allen Anderson, of the Michigan law firm, got the Chandra law firm of Cleveland involved. The first ruling from Judge David Dowd came in 2009. The settlement was signed in March by attorneys for the printers and Guild retiree John Olesky and by Beacon Journal publisher Andrea Mathewson and BJ Welfare Retirement Plan Administrator Aaron Burr.

Judge Dowd has 30 days to decide whether to accept the settlement. Retired printers and Guild retirees covered by the settlement will be notified by the Beacon Journal as to how to file their reimbursement claims. Both retiree groups will be issued prescription cards that will reduce their co-pays to $2 to $5, depending on the amount in effect on their retirement days, and will be put in a special non-Aetna health care group that will pay -- after a modest annual deductible -- all or nearly all of their medical costs until they die. The Beacon Journal will pay the attorneys' fees for the retired printers and Olesky, which is $772,500.

Click on the headline to read earlier BJ Alums blog articles on the health care lawsuits.