court all recognize that the board of veterans appeals had erred by applying the law to deny benefits to misjudge them due to the nature of her husband's death in the circs beckons court excuse the board's error with the conclusion that any reasonable interpretation of the correct law that is section three a one c two would comprehend mr just within its scope this conclusion is wrong because it's necessarily ignores you when you zero find as you that the board the board the board applied another regulation three point three twelve which has to do with whether service connected conditions are the cause of death and it it looked at the question of immediacy which is sort of the focus of this  but it didn't resolve that question because it looked at the other part of three twelve and said well wait as long as it's a principal cause of death we deniable that was the wrong law and everybody acknowledges that the veterans court included but then the veterans cour understand your honor problem is that the board never made a determination whether this was a fact immediate or not there's evidence of record from the the toxicologist at the depos not immediate so we think that raised the question what do you mean by media in the case of alcohol poisoning well that's sort of the big question and an alcohol poisoning as a matter of definition occurs as the alcohol metabolized to a point of poisoning and that takes hours i could've possibly been more immediate than it once i don't honestly know your honor and i think the evidence is if one accepts the veteran's court's interpretation of the regulation it doesn't have to go back to factual determination however if was agrees with your interpretation that it would have to go back is that where it plays out yes or yes there are lots of exactly correct because if the if the veterans court was correct in our view it reading immediately out of the regulation and basically saying it just means proximate there's no dispute that it was a proximate result of the of the intoxication nobody disputes that but but we think that the word has to be given effect because it's in the regulations that the v a said properly and immediately in those two words are there and only given the evidence that it was not immediate whatever immediate might mean given that evidence of record if immediate has any meaning in addition to proximate then it has to go back because the veterans court wrong and the only way it could could not have been wrong was it immediately has no meaning immediacy is entirely in the proper context isn't that well look the court is certainly no way you can drink a leader brandy and less than a minute and die instantly that so you would have to would have it would happen as the alcohol is metabolized right i think that's correct so immediate has to mean what the court said it right now because the court said that the court for one thing interpreted our argument to be well it has to be instantaneous and we're not necessarily contending that it looks like from the evidence that doesn't really ordinarily ever happen but the question is  border earlier had said well it happened fairly soon after is that enough is that immediate within the meaning of the v a regulation we don't know and the board never had an opportunity to consider whether the the evidence from the pa from the intoxication that result it's the latter your honor and that's a very good point because the veterans court stated our contention as a contention that the death would have to be instantaneous upon the swallowing of an alcoholic beverage and the immediate gives us a nice clear fine line as to whether what falls within or without this is the real focus here willful misconduct that is the ultimate purpose of the regulation is to exclude willful misconduct and so the proximate and immediate is all in immunity it it it's so flexible your honor that that is you know i don't know how i would define it because i don't know what the intended i would say immediate involves some sort of temporal element to it a temporal aspect and indeed all of the discussion evidence the board should determine what is immediate what was intended within the scope of the regulation to be included in it and i've suggested some possibilities as to what the a may have had in mind it may have been intending to capture only occur soon enough that we have confidence that it really was the result of misconduct and perhaps not something else i don't know because obviously i didn't grasp the regulation you sue but in the sense in which this was not the consequence of the willful misconduct of the deceased well there's no sense in which it was not the proximate result of the drinking of the alcohol and the resulting building misconduct which is where this reg is addressed right but the coma for another two months and then finally the decision is made to in lay support now what would be your view in that sort of situation that would present a difficult case your honor and because it would really raise the question of what what would be a trying to capture with the term immediately because the depth would not have been immediately but it would have been willful misconduct it would have been proximate you're on right i can't conceive that it's willful misconduct because that assumes what's being sought to be proved under this i mean the test for whether it will misconduct is whether the death result approximately in immediately so yes there was there was there was certainly conduct that slightly questionable consumption of this beverage which led to intoxication but unless it immediately resulted and whatever that means it was not willful misconduct because that's the ultimate determination that kicks it out of the line of duty and makes sense and not eligible for benefits so we keep the evidence which was not disputed that there's that the death was not a b if there is evidence indicating that it was not or the court had to have read immediately out and said that it really is suppressed or was it had nothing to prosecute which we think was improper interpretation element but it actually simply distinguishes between the single instance of intoxication and chronic drinking and i simply want to submit that that is not an acceptable reading of the of the regulation either because the where it comes in the sentence the immediately comes as an adverb modifying the verb or result that has to do with the resulting that the chain of causation and has nothing to do with the nature of the drinking which is clarified in the in the introduction of since the sense after it says that someone who is a chronic drinker and then develops some physical condition related that that's not work for miscon a single instance in which case it has to be approximately immediate death the immediately tells you nothing about the nature of the drinking that distinction is made of lies in the regulation we're simply saying that can't be the the interpretation that  centrally directly without an intervening cause and immediately is meant to distinguish the word chronic in the next sentence so you have an immediate death versus a chronic step that is a single instance of can one can think of all sorts of hypotheticals to show why the word immediately is not is not designed to mean instantaneously and i'd like to make a point in that regard you would ask a question about what the what the phrase proximately immediate it's worth noting that if you look at the autopsy report which is a page forty eight of the joint appendix when the autopsy was done mr chisholm had an excessive amount of alcohol in this in a system point three nine eight i believe  blood alcohol content in at the time of his death so clearly even if one were to assume that to agree that the word immediately means instantaneously when he died mr chisholm was clearly intoxicated what would be die for another two months in fact one of us a hypothetical very similar to have medical that i have written down and that shows exactly why the word immediately doesn't mean instantaneously obviously if someone gets in an accident and has an extremely high blood alcohol level that is willful misconduct they might not die quote unquote instantaneously or immediately if you want to find a pain you see they might die hours days even years later if they're in a calm and they might not be intoxicated at that point  thank you both men and i have just a couple of comments charter in response to the v a s position on on the use of the media to distinguish means it distinguishes from chronic the word chronic distinguishes chronic drinking from a single instance of drinking which simply reinforces the point i made earlier that immediately can't mean that you don't need it to mean that because chronic distinguishes chronic drinking over a period of years which leads to organic disease as a secondary cause of death finally i simply add that the essence of the secretary's argument remains that immediately really doesn't mean anything other than approximately it means just that result as a direct result of the intoxication which we don't dispute but these are these are regulations are not not musings of a philosophical nature i mean regulations are sort of nitty gritty here's what you do here's what they're designed to guide conduct or help resolve disputes that we have to presume and i think the courts of hesitate to do is the weapons court to presume that a regulation was written in such a way that it included terms two terms proximately joined by the word and immediately without really meaning to it to say anything by immediately being must have meant something and if it meant anything there was evidence in this case that the death was not immediate and therefore the