has benefits down at the regional office level for thirty years now in two thousand a support knows the law changed and you could actually get paid for doing that work so in my office the largest recovery we've had for better ended up being pro b persistent annoyance and after we changed our address they became more difficult but since the institution of the veterans benefits its management system since the computer has taken over and pushed the human factor out i think a lot of workers knew what our addresses were and the system would go to print a label that was wrong and i think they would override it they're not anymore and now instead of having two of these in here we're we have to look at the facts of this case we have the cards that we have been dealt yes many rank and we have a factual question well but but the question also is our council our veterans  only to him and the regulation i think says that it's supposed to be sent to the address of record and it is factual finding here is we don't have any reason to think it wasn't and if indeed it was sent to the address of record and the v a didn't receive notice that that address was defective because in this instance unlike others it didn't get you to return the mail returned what is a constitutional matter is defective about that notice on a our standard review this is this is absolutely a question of again it goes to the credibility of the veteran but then when you look at the the mangled tortured record fixed it and sent it back right so i sort of like but in this particular case we have a mailing that on its face went to the address of record that was provided and there is a presumption that when you the reference to the mailing and that it's clear that the mailing occurred that there was a presumption of regularity with respect to that mailing and we have no evidence that it wasn't that it didn't go to that address well i'm saying and i think i hope i'm crystal clear i think the presumption with with the veterans benefits ministration at this moment in time satele with their cobol and all their problems systemic problems with their eight databases not talking to each other i think that's a presumption of irregularity i think it's a perception that and what's the quickest to cure here you know mr shields last fourteen years he never got to his merits argument all i'm saying is what was practice and what practice was in this class of cases as we would get in touch with the regional office and we would go over it and most of the time they were they would reassure the document restart the clock and i think in a non adversarial system i don't think that's an unreasonable fix the veteran would have lost a year you know on a proceeding with his m well in this type of situation because there the man has testified under oath several times that he didn't get it and he didn't really have a factual determination that he well our that's our problem i group review but then we have a pattern of conduct here we used to say on the desert this is a go pro i mean and i'll spot say another thing here there's a chilling effect by this classic cases and now i'm getting two of these a week i'm not getting this is not now once you're twice a year the v p m s s them is dysfunctional and it's a true noble and i can't fix it the secretary is trying to fix it he told us at the court conference that before he leaves office he's going to get critical bob you know cobol was invented issues on the brief about a mile away from my office by grace hopper you know and it's it's old enough to collect social security and it's still putting the address labels on our mail here and we're all in the same canoe going over niagara falls but this was the first this is what i brought this case on and i'm paying for it not the client we brought this hundred of them i have to question what do you think that we have to rule here that that when a veteran says hey i didn't get it extension when he didn't discover the state of the case with the sixty day time limit on it until a year later when i got the claims i thought that the regulation allowance for good causes extensions to be so i think even after the time has  discretionary totally was the discretion of that there's no guidance assume it's in with the discretion of the staff and some staffers will reassure restart the clock and some tell us you know and this is one where they unfortunately they told  to mr shields his appeal in this case revolves entirely around his disagreement with the way the veterans court weighed the evidence regarding his receipt of the october two thousand and three state of the case and specifically the application of the presumption of regularity very frustrated i mean what what these lawyers do like i think is god's work and we've got a lot of have turns out there many who many of whom are homeless many of whom do move around many of whom are not educated  congress or perhaps the v a itself as a matter of regulation could change the presumption of regularity in some way but the reality is that is not the law and it's important to put this in context also we have a v a system where literally millions of notices and other documents are mailed out by the v a each year and so this presumption of regularity serves an important policy purpose which is to assume that these millions of pieces of mail are in fact sent to the address that's noted on the face of the document if you didn't have this presumption of regularity presumably it would have a potential situation where any number of claimants who maybe missed a deadline would be able to easily raise an argument oh i didn't get it several years later in two thousand and eight there was another statement of the case that was issued by the regional office that did not have the correct address on it at that point in time mr shields had attempted to change his address from the p o box that was used for the on the critical october two thousand and three statement the case to something else but the important point there is the board recognized that error corrected it reminded it back to the regional office and directed the regional office to reissue that statement a case which did which mr shields and appealed which led to the very appeal that's before this court now so the point is that's a that's an excellent example of how the board can properly apply the presumption of regularity with respect to that document cause extension under the statute and i guess regulation and if not only that if so what was the response to it i'd like i don't remember the details  mr shields had the opportunity under the v a s regulations it's thirty eight c f r section three point one zero nine b he could have filed a motion or made a request to enlarge the deadline to file the substantive appeal following the you know his receipt of that statement of the case and that deadline can be extended for good cause shown even after the deadline has passed he would have made that motion to the review or if there's a board to the board stuff his substantive appeal contained no such request in fact the board itself noted and this is the page ninety eight of the appendix in the board's decision noted that no request for an extension was included in his october two thousand four substantive appeal so again you're ok and after the board said to that when did the board say no such request was the board's decision was in march of two thousand and fourteen discussion of that prior to the board's actual decision so that's an excellent example of how under the regulations as a procedural matter mr shield had the opportunity to make an argument at the time to request additional time if he thought he had a basis for doing so and no such request was made and getting back to the issue of the october two thousand and three statement the case the board found as a matter of fact that it was properly addressed and there is no dispute here that address on that document mr seale this pill box was his current address as at that time he had no representative at that point in time there's no indication in the file that that document was ever returned to the v a suggesting it was on deliverable so it was a matter of fact the board and then the veterans court found that the presumption of regularity applied here there was nothing to rebut it other than mr shields his statement that he didn't recall receiving that document but mr shields has not pointed to any case and we have not found one either from either the veterans quarter of this court where any court has held that the presumption of regularity with respect to the a mailing procedures has officially been rebutted simply by a claimant saying i don't remember receiving the document in the few cases where it has been rebutted there's always been some other indicia in the claim file itself to suggest that there was a problem with the mailings contemporaneous with the one in question and there's nothing in this file from the october two thousand and three time period to suggest that there was anything going wrong with the mailings at that time unless the court has any further question is articulated by the requirement to act in a veteran friendly fashion and there's a there's a reason for that society owes a debt and  the language on the front of the v a office but more because this person's civilians are taken and put into a system which is designed to create soldiers or or sailors or marines or air airport personnel people who fight and everybody has to be everybody in the service has to be able to fight and a consequence not only combat but training in this case jumping out of airplanes is as the army says is designed to train as you fight and in consequence to put those people through both physical and mental very briefly for a priest to please the court you know there are about twenty one million veterans right now the veterans bar is intimate it's about four thousand and most of barristers we're solicitors you know we work in small towns and small office i have a legal assistant she's a great young gal she's got two master's degrees and she estimates now she's spending sixty percent of her time chasing ghosts trying to get missing documents we have the rumsfeld problem i mean we're law office we're not a veteran service office officer in paid by by congress and chartered by congress that has no immunity because if they screw up the secretary says well they're not our agent and you have no recourse i'm a licensed attorney in the district of columbia in the state of michigan i have two grievance panels to worry about and i have the courts and malpractise actions and we're just this this practice is becoming untenable with all these missing documents in there has to be a solution and if what we're getting from the agency is well presumption of regularity take a hike and then i start getting you know service a process for the complaints because my veteran says well presumption of regularity you got that and you didn't respond in time we filed my appeal and you didn't appear at my hearing i peer to the hearing at the regional office a few days ago and i was supposed to have one client and i had three the next week i come down i'm supposed to have two clients i have one because my mind marine with four purple hearts didn't get its notice of this hearing and we knew we should call them and i told the secretary you didn't call him she said i didn't call him because we're just not get notice this this system is broken and it's not this is not a backlog issue this is a system