DULUTH, Minn. — A Minnesota woman is suing the federal government after a letter she mailed to her son in Iraq was returned with the word “deceased” stamped on the envelope, even though the soldier is alive.
Joan Najbar filed the lawsuit last month in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis, claiming emotional distress and negligence.
Najbar sent her son, Samuel Eininger, the letter in September 2006. It was returned several weeks later with the red stamp mark.
Najbar contacted the Red Cross and learned her son had not been killed.
The government’s response to her lawsuit has not yet been filed, but the U.S. Postal Service found no evidence of negligence after Najbar filed a claim in 2008 seeking $118,000 in damages.
Her attorney says he is investigating whether Najbar’s anti-war rally on the steps of a Duluth post office days before the letter was returned had anything to do with the stamp.
Najbar, 58, has never received an apology from the Postal Service or a reason for why the letter was mistakenly stamped.
