Lawsuit goes after state computer contractors for unemployment insurance flap
LANSING, MI -- Michiganders who say they were falsely flagged for unemployment fraud by the Michigan Unemployment Insurance Agency computer system are going after the state contractors who provided the technology in a federal lawsuit.
"They are the businesses that got paid millions of dollars.... to design and implement the systems that we know positively, unequivocally failed in what they were supposed to do," said Jonathan Marko, an attorney with Detroit-based Ernst & Marko Law who filed the suit.
He's representing three plaintiffs -- Patti Jo Cahoo, Kristen Mendyk and Khadija Cole -- who say they were falsely accused of defrauding the UIA. The suit seeks class-action status.
From Oct. 2013 through Aug. 2015, a state computer system flagged people for fraudulent unemployment claims. In some cases it sent a message to an online unemployment account they'd stopped using long ago, and then automatically found people guilty when they did not reply and assessed 400 percent fines.
Read more: http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2017/03/lawsuit_goes_after_state_compu.html