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United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
05-7187
GLENN H. JACKSON,
Claimant-Appellant,
v.
R. JAMES NICHOLSON, Secretary of Veterans Affairs,
Respondent-Appellee.
Kenneth M. Carpenter, Carpenter, Chartered, of Topeka, Kansas, argued for
claimant-appellant.
Todd M. Hughes, Attorney, Commercial Litigation Branch, Civil Division, United
States Department of Justice, of Washington, DC, argued for respondent-appellee. On
the brief were Peter D. Keisler, Assistant Attorney General, David M. Cohen, Director,
Donald E. Kinner, Assistant Director, and David B. Stinson, Attorney. Of counsel on the
brief were David J. Barrans, Deputy Assistant General Counsel, and Ethan G. Kalett,
Attorney, United States Department of Veterans Affairs, of Washington, DC.
Appealed from: United States Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims
Judge Lawrence B. Hagel
United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
05-7187
GLENN H. JACKSON,
Claimant-Appellant,
v.
R. JAMES NICHOLSON, Secretary of Veterans Affairs,
Respondent-Appellee.
___________________________
DECIDED: June 1, 2006
___________________________
Before MAYER, BRYSON and DYK, Circuit Judges.
DYK, Circuit Judge.
Appellant Glenn H. Jackson (“Jackson”) appeals the decision of the Court of
Appeals for Veterans Claims (“Veterans Court”). The Veterans Court affirmed the
Board of Veterans’ Appeals (“Board”) decision denying entitlement to an effective date
earlier than October 18, 2000, for a service connected low-back disability. Because we
agree with the Veterans Court and the Board that the term “appellate decision” in
38
C.F.R. § 3.156(b) refers only to a decision by the Board, we affirm.
BACKGROUND
Jackson served on active duty in the U.S. Army from June 1969 to December
1970. On September 10, 1996, he filed a request to reopen a previously disallowed
claim for a service connected low-back disability. The regional office (“RO”) denied the
request. Jackson appealed the decision to the Board, and the Board affirmed on
November 10, 1998. The Veterans Court affirmed the Board’s decision on July 25,
2000, and in a September 19, 2001, decision, we affirmed the decision of the Veterans
Court. Jackson v. Principi,
265 F.3d 1366 (Fed. Cir. 2001); Jackson v. Gober,
17 Vet.
App. 390 (Vet. App. 2000) (Table decision).
While the appeal was pending before our court, Jackson, on October 17, 2000,
submitted new evidence to the regional office in another attempt to re-open the low
back claim. Based on this new evidence, the regional office reopened his claim, but
assigned an effective date of October 18, 2000. Jackson appealed the RO’s decision to
the Board, arguing that the RO should have assigned an effective date of September
10, 1996, the date on which he filed his original request to reopen because he filed his
new evidence before this court rendered its decision. He relied on 38 C.F.R § 3.156(b),
under which new and material evidence received prior to an “appellate decision” is
“considered as having been filed in connection with the claim which was pending at the
beginning of the appeal period.” The Board denied the earlier effective date because it
interpreted the phrase “appellate decision” to refer only to a decision of the Board as
opposed to a decision by the Veterans Court or our court. Accordingly, the “new and
material evidence” filed on October 17, 2000 was not considered as having been filed in
connection with the September 10, 1996, request to reopen, because it was submitted
after the Board’s November 1998 “appellate decision.” J.A. at 2. If the Board had
construed “appellate decision” to refer to this court’s September 2001 decision, Jackson
would have been entitled to the 1996 effective date.
05-7187 2
Jackson appealed the Board’s decision to the Veterans Court, arguing that the
term “appellate decision” includes decisions by the Veterans Court and our court. The
Veterans Court affirmed the Board’s decision on July 1, 2005, reasoning that the history
of the regulation, and the regulatory and statutory context in which it appears, shows
that “appellate decision” referred only to a decision by the Board. [JA 3-6] On August
18, 2005, Jackson timely appealed. We have jurisdiction pursuant to
38 U.S.C.
§ 7292(a) and (c).
DISCUSSION
The Board’s jurisdictional statute,
38 U.S.C. § 7104(b) provides that “[e]xcept as
provided in section 5108 of this title, when a claim is disallowed by the Board, the claim
may not thereafter be reopened and allowed and a claim based upon the same factual
basis may not be considered.” Section 5108 requires the Secretary to reopen a claim
“[i]f new and material evidence is presented or secured with respect to a claim which
has been disallowed . . . .”
38 U.S.C. § 5108 (2000).
38 U.S.C. § 5110(a) provides that
“the effective date of an award based on . . . a claim reopened after final
adjudication . . . shall be fixed in accordance with the facts found, but shall not be earlier
than the date of receipt of application therefor.”
38 U.S.C. § 5110(a) (2000) (emphasis
added). In Sears v. Principi,
349 F.3d 1326, 1330-31 (Fed. Cir. 2003), we upheld a
Department of Veterans Affairs (“VA”) regulation that treats a request to reopen for new
and material evidence as the “application therefor” referred to in section 5110(a), and
thus treats the date of the request to reopen as the effective date.1
1
In contrast, a decision to reopen a claim based on clear and unmistakable
error (“CUE”) “has the same effect as if the decision had been made on the date of the
05-7187 3
The regulation at issue here, section 3.156(b), provides in pertinent part:
New and material evidence received prior to the expiration of the appeal
period, or prior to the appellate decision if a timely appeal has been filed
(including evidence received prior to an appellate decision and referred to
the agency of original jurisdiction by the Board of Veterans Appeals
without consideration in that decision in accordance with the provisions of
§ 20.1304(b)(1) of this chapter), will be considered as having been filed in
connection with the claim which was pending at the beginning of the
appeal period.
38 C.F.R. § 3.156(b) (2004) (emphasis added). In other words, if a claim is reopened
based on new and material evidence presented before an “appellate decision,” the
effective date of the claim will be the date of the original request to reopen. The term
“appellate decision” is not defined in section 3.156(b) or elsewhere in title 38 of the
Code of Federal Regulations. As the petitioner appears to concede, the language of the
regulation is ambiguous as to whether the regulation is referring to an “appellate
decision” of the Board or an “appellate decision” of the courts on judicial review. See
Pet. Reply Br. at 4-6. We agree with the government that “appellate decision” in this
regulation refers to the final appellate decision of the Board.
First, at the time the regulation was promulgated in 1961, the only appeal
available within the veterans’ benefits system was to the Board. See
26 Fed. Reg.
1561, 1570-71 (Feb. 24, 1961). Judicial review of Board decisions by the Veterans
Court and the Federal Circuit was not made available until the 1988 enactment of the
Veterans’ Judicial Review Act. See
38 U.S.C. §§ 101, et. seq. Therefore, at the time
section 3.156(b) was promulgated, “appellate decision” could only have meant a
decision by the Board.
prior decision.” 38 U.S.C. §§ 5109A(a), 7111(b) (2000); see Cook v. Principi,
318 F.3d
1334 (Fed. Cir. 2002) (en banc).
05-7187 4
Second, Jackson concedes that the term “appellate decision” is used elsewhere
in the regulations to refer to decisions of the Board.2 Jackson has not cited any
provision of title 38 in which the term “appellate decision” is used to refer a decision by
an entity other than the Board, and we see no compelling reason that the term should
have a different meaning in section 3.156 than it does elsewhere in the regulations.
Third, even within section 3.156(b) itself, the term “appellate decision” is used to
refer to a Board decision. The parenthetical in section 3.156(b) provides that new and
material evidence “includ[es] evidence received prior to an appellate decision and
referred to the agency of original jurisdiction by the Board of Veterans Appeals without
consideration in that decision in accordance with the provision of § 20.1304(b)(1) of this
chapter . . . .”
38 C.F.R. § 3.156(b) (emphases added). “Appellate decision” within the
parenthetical clearly refers to a decision by the Board. That is a strong indication that it
carries the same meaning outside the parenthetical.3
2
See
38 C.F.R. § 19.9(a) (2004) (requiring Board to remand to agency if
agency action is essential to appellate decision);
38 C.F.R. §§ 20.400-401(a) (2004)
(providing that when a claimant joins an administrative appeal (by an official of the VA)
the appellate decision on the merged appeal constitutes the final disposition of the
claimants rights);
38 C.F.R. § 20.904 (2004) (permitting vacatur of appellate decision
involving due process violations or submission of false or fraudulent evidence);
38
C.F.R. § 20.1000 (permitting Board reconsideration of appellate decision);
38 C.F.R. §§
20.1104-1105 (2004) (providing that appellate decision which affirms agency
determination subsumes the agency determination);
38 C.F.R. § 20.1201 (2004)
(providing for amendment of appellate decision upon request under special
circumstances); 38 C.F.R. 20.1301(a) (2004) (providing for disclosure of full text of
appellate decision to appellants);
38 C.F.R. § 20.1304(a) (2004) (providing for change in
representation, request for a personal hearing, or submission of additional evidence
prior to appellate decision).
3
The petitioner concedes that the regulation to which the parenthetical
refers, section 20.1304, uses “appellate decision” to refer to a Board decision. See Pet.
Br. at 6-7.
05-7187 5
Finally, the petitioner has failed to make a showing that the effective date of a
claim should depend on the happenstance of the filing of an unsuccessful court appeal.
Rather, we think that interpreting “appellate decision” to refer to Board decisions is
consistent with the purpose of the statutory scheme. The purpose of the “new and
material evidence” provision is to permit veterans to reopen their claims by submitting
new and material evidence to the Department of Veterans Affairs (“VA”), which has the
authority to reopen claims. Once the VA action has become final by the issuance of a
Board decision, and the matter has been appealed to the Veterans Court, the VA loses
jurisdiction over the request to reopen. See Graves v. Principi,
294 F.3d 1350, 1352
(Fed. Cir. 2002) (“[I]t may happen that a motion for reconsideration of a Board decision
is filed after an appeal has been timely filed with the Veterans Court. In that situation,
jurisdiction over the case already has passed to the Veterans Court.”) (citing Griggs v.
Provident Consumer Disc. Co.,
459 U.S. 56, 58 (1982)). The VA can reacquire
jurisdiction only if the Veterans Court or this court remands the matter to the VA, or a
new application to reopen is filed with the VA itself. If a case is remanded to the VA by
either the Veterans Court or this court for further adjudication and the issuance of a new
Board decision, and new and material evidence has been submitted while the case is
still on appeal in the court system, the effective date of the claim may be measured by
the date on which the request to reopen was first filed. Under these circumstances, the
original proceeding has not been terminated.4 But where, as here, the VA reacquires
jurisdiction only by the filing of a new request to reopen, we think it would be
4
We express no opinion as to whether, while the matter is on appeal to the
court, a claimant could request a remand for the sole purpose of enabling the VA to
consider the new evidence.
05-7187 6
anomalous--absent some fault by the VA--to treat the newly filed request as having the
effective date of the older (finally rejected) request, and we do not read the regulation as
introducing such an anomaly into the system.5
CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons, we agree with the Board and the Veterans Court that
the term “appellate decision” in section 3.156(b) refers to a Board decision and not a
subsequent judicial decision. The decision of the Veterans Court is affirmed.
AFFIRMED.
COSTS
No costs.
5
We note that the regulation does provide for a “retroactive” date in limited
circumstances where, for example, records have been misplaced.
38 C.F.R. § 3.156(c).
We need not decide in this case whether there are other situations (not encompassed
by the regulations) in which errors by the VA would require an earlier effective date for a
new and material evidence claim.
05-7187 7
