Logan v. McDonough

Case: 20-2308 Document: 16 Page: 1 Filed: 04/12/2021
NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.
United States Court of Appeals
for the Federal Circuit
______________________
MARSHA LOGAN,
Claimant-Appellant
v.
DENIS MCDONOUGH, SECRETARY OF
VETERANS AFFAIRS,
Respondent-Appellee
______________________
2020-2308
______________________
Appeal from the United States Court of Appeals for
Veterans Claims in No. 19-1991, Judge Coral Wong Pi-
etsch.
______________________
Decided: April 12, 2021
______________________
MARSHA LOGAN, Shreveport, LA, pro se.
JOHN MCADAMS, Commercial Litigation Branch, Civil
Division, United States Department of Justice, Washing-
ton, DC, for respondent-appellee. Also represented by
CLAUDIA BURKE, JENNIFER B. DICKEY, ROBERT EDWARD
KIRSCHMAN, JR.
______________________
Case: 20-2308 Document: 16 Page: 2 Filed: 04/12/2021
2 LOGAN v. MCDONOUGH
Before NEWMAN, MOORE, and TARANTO, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM.
Marsha Logan appeals a decision of the United States
Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims (Veterans Court).
Logan v. Wilkie, No. 19-1991, 2020 WL 1528112 (Vet. App.
Mar. 31, 2020). In that decision, the Veterans Court af-
firmed a decision of the Board of Veterans’ Appeals that
rejected Ms. Logan’s claim to accrued benefits under 38
U.S.C. § 5121(a), a claim Ms. Logan filed after the death of
her aunt, whom Ms. Logan asserted had been the surviving
spouse of a veteran. Ms. Logan appeals. Because she has
not made a constitutional claim and has identified no error
of law committed by the Veterans Court, we must dismiss
the appeal for lack of jurisdiction.
I
The facts recounted in the Veterans Court’s opinion are
as follows. In 1934, Irene Crawford, who later became Ms.
Logan’s aunt, married Elbert Burt. Mr. Burt served on ac-
tive duty in the armed forces from August 1942 to October
1945. During the war, Mr. Burt was divorced from Ms. Lo-
gan’s aunt and married another woman, but that marriage
ended in divorce in 1947.
In 1971, when Mr. Burt applied to the Veterans Admin-
istration (VA, now the Department of Veterans Affairs) for
disability benefits, he listed Ms. Logan’s aunt, as well as
his second wife, as former spouses. In 1974, in a statement
submitted to VA to verify his income for that year, Mr. Burt
listed Ms. Logan’s aunt as his wife. Between 1985 and
1990, in correspondence with VA, he stated that he was not
married. Mr. Burt died in July 1991. His death certificate
lists Ms. Logan’s aunt as Mr. Burt’s spouse at the time of
his death.
In September 2004, Ms. Logan’s aunt—through Ms.
Logan acting on her behalf—filed an application for de-
pendency and indemnity compensation, death pension, and
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LOGAN v. MCDONOUGH 3
accrued benefits by a surviving spouse. The application
was premised on the assertion that Ms. Logan’s aunt was
married to Mr. Burt from March 1934 until his death in
1991. In January 2005, the relevant VA regional office re-
jected the application, and required resubmission, because
the application was not signed or inked by Ms. Logan’s
aunt herself. The regional office also referred to VA records
in which Mr. Burt had reported his divorce from Ms. Lo-
gan’s aunt during World War II and stated that a resub-
mitted application should be accompanied by evidence to
support the assertion that Ms. Logan’s aunt was in fact
married to Mr. Burt at the time of his death in 1991. In
March 2005, the regional office reiterated the requirements
it had stated in January and said that it must deny the
claim in the absence of the called-for evidence, but added
that it could continue to process the claim if it received the
evidence by January 12, 2006.
Ms. Logan’s aunt died in April 2005. In July of that
year, Ms. Logan told VA that she had been unable to find
any evidence of a divorce between her aunt and Mr. Burt,
and she therefore presumed that they were married until
Mr. Burt’s death. The next month, the regional office
deemed the September 2004 claim for benefits withdrawn
in light of the April 2005 death of Ms. Logan’s aunt. In
January 2006, the office explained to Ms. Logan that it
could not act on the claim because her aunt (the claimant)
had died, and Ms. Logan could not open a claim on her
aunt’s behalf. In August 2007, the office denied a renewed
attempt by Ms. Logan to press her aunt’s claim, observing
that it had no evidence establishing the aunt’s status as
Mr. Burt’s surviving spouse when he died in 1991.
In September 2007, Ms. Logan filed the claim that is
now at issue. Specifically, she filed, on her own behalf, a
claim for accrued benefits due a deceased beneficiary, as-
serting that she had borne the expense of her aunt’s last
sickness. See 38 U.S.C. § 5121; 38 C.F.R. § 3.1000. The VA
regional office denied the claim. It did so, first, on the
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4 LOGAN v. MCDONOUGH
ground that the claim was untimely because, contrary to
38 U.S.C. § 5121(c) and 38 C.F.R. § 3.1000(c), the claim was
filed more than one year after the death of Ms. Logan’s
aunt. The regional office added that, in any event, it had
not received evidence showing the marriage of Ms. Logan’s
aunt and Mr. Burt that would qualify her as his surviving
spouse, a precondition to Ms. Logan’s own claim.
When Ms. Logan appealed, the Board twice remanded
her claim to the regional office for further review of evi-
dence bearing on the issue of Mr. Burt’s marital state at
the time of his death. The regional office continued to deny
Ms. Logan’s claim for accrued benefits.
In March 2019, the Board affirmed the regional office’s
denial. S.A. 13. It determined that Ms. Logan’s claim for
accrued benefits was filed in September 2007, more than
one year after her aunt’s death. S.A. 13, 15. In addition,
the Board determined that the preponderance of the evi-
dence showed that Ms. Logan’s aunt was not Mr. Burt’s
surviving spouse in 1991, because the evidence showed
that Mr. Burt was married to someone else until 1947,
when he was divorced, and no evidence showed a remar-
riage to Mr. Logan’s aunt. S.A. 16.
In March 2020, the Veterans Court affirmed the Board.
It agreed with the Board that Ms. Logan had not timely
filed her claim. Logan, 2020 WL 1528112, at *2–3. The
court also held that it could not find clear error (the appli-
cable standard of review) in the Board’s decision, finding
that a preponderance of the evidence showed that Ms. Lo-
gan’s aunt was not married to Mr. Burt when he died. Id.at *4–5. The court recited the evidence on which the Board
relied and also explained that, although a Social Security
Administration record refers to Ms. Longan’s aunt as Mr.
Burt’s widow, VA and Social Security criteria for recogniz-
ing a surviving spouse differ. Id. at *5. The court con-
cluded that Ms. Logan’s “general disagreement with the
Board’s decision, without argument or evidence, is
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LOGAN v. MCDONOUGH 5
insufficient to demonstrate that the Board’s findings were
clearly erroneous.” Id.
The Veterans Court’s decision became final on April 22,
2020. Ms. Logan timely appealed.
II
Our jurisdiction in cases from the Veterans Court is
limited. Wanless v. Shinseki, 618 F.3d 1333, 1336 (Fed.
Cir. 2010). Where, as here, no constitutional issue is pre-
sented, we have jurisdiction to consider only legal issues
raised by a Veterans Court decision, not “a challenge to a
factual determination” or “a challenge to a law or regula-
tion as applied to the facts of a particular case.” 38 U.S.C.
§ 7292(d)(1), (2).
Ms. Logan’s appeal challenges the Veterans Court’s af-
firmance of the Board’s factual findings that her claim was
untimely filed and that her aunt was not the surviving
spouse of Mr. Burt for accrued-benefits purposes. See Lo-
gan Inf. Br. at 2–3. Ms. Logan, however, has not identified
a legal error in the Veterans Court’s decision; nor has she
raised a constitutional issue. See id. Therefore, this appeal
falls outside our jurisdiction.
Affirming the Board, the Veterans Court noted that
Ms. Logan first filed her own application for accrued bene-
fits in September 2007, more than one year after her aunt’s
death in April 2005. Logan, 2020 WL 1528112, at *3. The
court agreed with the Board’s finding that although Ms.
Logan had filed an application for benefits in September
2004 on her aunt’s behalf, that claim is not her own claim,
filed in September 2007, which is the only live claim pre-
sented. Id. Ms. Logan’s challenge that she first filed a
claim for benefits in September 2004, see Logan Inf. Br. at
2, is at most an argument about the application of the law
on identifying distinct claims as applied to the facts here;
it raises no legal issue. The Veterans Court also upheld the
Board’s finding that there was no evidence showing Mr.
Case: 20-2308 Document: 16 Page: 6 Filed: 04/12/2021
6 LOGAN v. MCDONOUGH
Burt and Ms. Logan’s aunt were validly married after his
second divorce in 1947. See Logan, 2020 WL 1528112, at
*4. On appeal, Ms. Logan points to evidence that purport-
edly establishes her aunt’s status as Mr. Burt’s surviving
spouse, see Logan Inf. Br. at 3, but this argument merely
challenges the Board’s finding of fact. Ms. Logan has not
raised any issues that fall within our jurisdiction. See 38
U.S.C. § 7292(d)(2); see also Newhouse v. Nicholson, 497
F.3d 1298, 1302 (Fed. Cir. 2007) (“Our jurisdictional stat-
ute precludes appellate review of factual matters and the
application of law to facts.”).
III
Because Ms. Logan has not raised any challenge within
our jurisdiction, we dismiss this appeal.
DISMISSED
COSTS
The parties shall bear their own costs.