Court accepts veteran benefits case (June 16, 2008)

The Supreme Court agreed to consider the extent to which the Department of Veterans Affairs is liable if it fails to adequately inform a veteran of the information needed to process a benefits claim.

Woodrow Sanders served in the U.S. Army from 1942 until 1945. Although his service medical records do not indicate that he suffered an eye trauma or abnormality, Sanders asserted that on Sept. 12, 1944, while serving in
France, a bazooka exploded near him, burning the right side of his face.

In December 1948, Sanders was diagnosed with chronic, right-eye choroidoretinitis, an inflammation of the choroids and retina. Believing his choroidoretinitis was caused by his injury in 1944, Sanders submitted a claim for service connection for a right-eye disability to the VA. The VA regional office denied his claim in February 1949.

Approximately 40 years later, Sanders filed a statement attempting to reopen his claim for service connection for his choroidoretinitis.

In support of his claim, Sanders submitted a statement from a VA ophthalmologist, dated December 1992, and a statement from a private ophthalmologist, dated September 1993. The VA ophthalmologist reported that Sanders stated that he was injured in a bridge explosion, rather than a bazooka explosion, and that he had experienced vision loss in his right eye ever since.

Sanders’s private ophthalmologist also reported that he indicated that his injury occurred during a bridge explosion and that he had experienced vision loss in his right eye since then.

Sanders later stated that both the VA ophthalmologist and his private ophthalmologist were incorrect in reporting that his eye injury occurred during a bridge explosion. Instead, Sanders reiterated that his injury occurred when the right side of his face was burned by a bazooka explosion. According to Sanders, this injury went unreported because there were no medics to whom he could report his injury and because most of his fellow soldiers were wounded or killed.

Nonetheless, in July 1994 the VARO found Sanders had failed to present new and material evidence to reopen his claim. Sanders appealed to the Board, but the Board denied his claim for service connection in a decision dated Nov. 27, 1998. In January 1999, however, the Veterans Court remanded Sanders’s case for further development and adjudication.

In June 2000, the Board found that new and material evidence had been presented to reopen Sanders’s claim for service connection and remanded Sanders’ claim for a VA ophthalmologic examination to determine the etiology of his right-eye condition.

In December 2000, Sanders had a comprehensive eye examination by a VA optometrist. The optometrist diagnosed decreased vision in the right eye due to a macular scar and a small chorioretinal scar in the left eye, but stated that, based on the fact that Sanders’s visual acuity in the right eye was 20/20 on May 15, 1942, and 20/25 on Sept. 25, 1945, when he was discharged from the Army, it is unlikely that the decrease in vision was related to Sanders’ September 1944 trauma. The optometrist also noted that there was no documented evidence of reduced vision until 1948.

Although he noted it was possible Sanders contracted some infection during his military service, the optometrist stated that “there is no way to prove this either.”

In August 2001, Sanders was also examined by another VA ophthalmologist, who diagnosed dense macular scarring of the right eye and early macular degeneration of the left eye. The ophthalmologist stated that Sanders’ decreased vision was consistent with these clinical findings, but that the etiology of Sanders’s macular scar “is more difficult to ascertain.”

The VARO issued Supplemental Statements of the Case in 2001 and 2002 discussing this additional medical evidence. The VARO also sent Sanders a letter stating that it had all the information it needed to decide his claim, but that he could submit any additional evidence he wanted considered.

In October 2003, the Board denied Sanders’s claim for service connection for his right-eye choroidoretinitis. The Board found that the opinion of the VA optometrist was more probative on the issue of whether Sanders’ choroidoretinitis was service- related and concluded that the preponderance of the evidence weighed against the claim. Sanders appealed to the Veterans Court.

On appeal to the Veterans Court, Sanders argued that the VA failed to provide notice as to who was responsible for obtaining the evidence necessary to substantiate his claim, as required by the notice provision of the Veterans Claims Assistance Act of 2000, and failed to provide this notice prior to the initial denial of his claim.

On Aug. 25, 2005, the Veterans Court found that there was a plausible basis in the record for the Board’s decision denying service connection. The Veterans Court also found that Sanders did not allege any specific prejudice resulting from the VA’s alleged failure to notify him about who would ultimately be responsible for obtaining the evidence necessary to substantiate his claim, and to provide notice before the initial unfavorable decision by the VARO. Because Sanders did not meet the burden of showing how such errors affected the fairness of the adjudication, the Veterans Court stated that it need not consider whether any error occurred.

On May 16, 2007, a three-judge panel on the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed the lower court's holding.

“The Veterans Court overlooked the uniquely pro-claimant nature of the VA benefits system,” the court held. “Put simply, interpreting § 7261(b)(2) as requiring veterans to overcome a series of complex legal hurdles in order to secure the assistance mandated by Congress would clearly frustrate the purpose of the VCAA.”

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the case next fall.

Question presented:

Whether courts must presume the failure of the Department of Veterans’ Affairs to give notice to benefits’ claimants to be prejudicial.