Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca13-24-01503/USCOURTS-ca13-24-01503-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Crystal M. Coggins
Petitioner
Office of Personnel Management
Respondent

Document Text:

NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.

United States Court of Appeals 

for the Federal Circuit

______________________

CRYSTAL M. COGGINS,

Petitioner

v.

OFFICE OF PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT,

Respondent

______________________

2024-1503

______________________

Petition for review of the Merit Systems Protection 

Board in No. DC-844E-19-0411-I-1.

______________________

Decided: December 9, 2024

______________________

CRYSTAL M. COGGINS, Jonesville, NC, pro se. 

 JOSHUA MOORE, Commercial Litigation Branch, Civil 

Division, United States Department of Justice, 

Washington, DC, for respondent. Also represented by 

BRIAN M. BOYNTON, ALBERT S. IAROSSI, PATRICIA M.

MCCARTHY. 

 ______________________

Before DYK, CHEN, and CUNNINGHAM, Circuit Judges.

Case: 24-1503 Document: 33 Page: 1 Filed: 12/09/2024
2 COGGINS v. OPM

PER CURIAM.

Crystal Coggins petitions pro se for review of a decision 

of the Merit Systems Protection Board (“Board”). The 

Board affirmed the Office of Personnel Management’s 

denial of her claim for disability retirement benefits. We 

affirm.

BACKGROUND

This case presents the question of whether Ms. Coggins 

was employed by the federal government for the 18-month

period required to be eligible for disability retirement 

benefits under the Federal Employee Retirement System 

(“FERS”), 5 U.S.C. § 8451. 

From 2013 to 2015, Ms. Coggins worked as a 

Registered Nurse at the Salem, Virginia, Medical Center 

for the Department of Veterans Affairs (“VA”). The parties 

dispute the effective date of Ms. Coggins’s appointment—

she says she started work on September 22, 2013, and the 

government claims her effective start date was October 20, 

2013, the date stated in her individual retirement record 

(“IRR”). 

On March 27, 2014, Ms. Coggins suffered a seizure 

while on duty and fell to the ground. Thereafter, she used 

a combination of annual leave, sick leave, and leave 

without pay until her termination on June 5, 2015. She 

subsequently filed an application for disability retirement 

benefits with the Office of Personnel Management 

(“OPM”). 

While Ms. Coggins’s claim was pending, the VA 

corrected her IRR, adjusting her last day of pay from 

March 24, 2014, to April 10, 2014. Just as the parties 

dispute her start date, they dispute her end date. 

Ms. Coggins argues that her last day of pay was May 9, 

2014, and the government argues that her last day of pay 

was April 10, 2014, as stated in her IRR.

Case: 24-1503 Document: 33 Page: 2 Filed: 12/09/2024
COGGINS v. OPM 3

In September 2018, OPM issued a decision denying 

Ms. Coggins’s application for benefits on the ground that 

she failed to meet the required 18 months of creditable 

service to establish eligibility for disability retirement 

benefits under 5 U.S.C. § 8451. When Ms. Coggins sought 

reconsideration of that decision, OPM affirmed, concluding 

that she had accrued only 17 months and 8 days of 

creditable federal service. 

Ms. Coggins appealed to the Board. In an initial 

decision, the administrative judge (“AJ”) found that 

Ms. Coggins’s service began on October 20, 2013, and her 

last day of pay was April 10, 2014. In total, Ms. Coggins 

had taken, according to the AJ, 1469.75 hours or 8 months 

and 14 days of leave without pay in 2014, for which she 

received 6 months’ creditable service under the applicable 

OPM regulations. Combining those 6 months of creditable 

service in 2014 with Ms. Coggins’s time on duty before her 

injury, as well as her creditable time in 2015 before her 

termination, the AJ concluded that she had accrued 

“1 year, 5 months[,] and 1 day of creditable service.” S. 

App’x 16.1 Ms. Coggins also had “36 hours or 7 days of 

unused sick days,” so the AJ found that she had a total of 

creditable service of “1 year[,] 5 months[,] and 17 days.”2 S. 

App’x 16. The AJ rejected Ms. Coggins’s arguments that 

1 Citations to “S. App’x” are to the supplemental 

appendix filed by the government.

2 On this point, the AJ’s decision appears to contain 

a typographical or arithmetic error. As the government 

notes, see Respondent Informal Br. 6 n.4, the addition of 

7 days to 1 year, 5 months, and 1 day results in a final 

calculation of 1 year, 5 months, and 8 days of creditable 

service. The OPM decision that the AJ reviewed includes 

the correct calculation, and, in any event, to the extent that 

the AJ’s decision presents a different calculation than that 

of OPM, Ms. Coggins benefits from the discrepancy.

Case: 24-1503 Document: 33 Page: 3 Filed: 12/09/2024
4 COGGINS v. OPM

her effective start date was September 22, 2013, because 

record evidence showed that, although she may have been 

scheduled to begin work that September, her start was 

delayed until October, in part because of a government 

shutdown at the time, during which she was furloughed. 

The AJ also rejected her claim that her last day of pay was 

May 9, 2014, in part on the ground that it could not 

consider the bank records Ms. Coggins submitted to show 

payments after April 10, 2014, to prove a later last day of 

pay. In the AJ’s view, Ms. Coggins’s bank records could not 

be considered because an audit by the Defense Financial 

Accounting Service (“DFAS”) showed that she should not 

have been paid on those later dates. The full Board denied 

review and affirmed the AJ’s initial decision. 

Ms. Coggins seeks review from this court. We have 

jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(9).

DISCUSSION

We must affirm the judgment of the Board unless its 

decision is “(1) arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, 

or otherwise not in accordance with law; (2) obtained 

without procedures required by law, rule, or regulation 

having been followed; or (3) unsupported by substantial 

evidence.” 5 U.S.C. § 7703(c). The Board’s fact findings are 

reviewed for substantial evidence, and we give no deference 

to its determinations on matters of law. See Brenner v. 

Dep’t of Veterans Affs., 990 F.3d 1313, 1322 (Fed. Cir. 2021). 

The petitioner “bears the burden of establishing error in 

the [Board’s] decision.” Jones v. Dep’t of Health & Hum. 

Servs., 834 F.3d 1361, 1366 (Fed. Cir. 2016) (quoting Harris 

v. Dep’t of Veterans Affs., 142 F.3d 1463, 1467 (Fed. Cir. 

1998)).

Under the FERS, a federal employee must meet several 

criteria to receive disability retirement benefits, one of 

which is that the employee must have completed at least 

18 months of creditable time of service when he or she 

ceases government employment. See 5 U.S.C. 

Case: 24-1503 Document: 33 Page: 4 Filed: 12/09/2024
COGGINS v. OPM 5

§ 8451(a)(1)(A). OPM regulations direct the agency to rely 

upon the employee’s IRR for determining the actual period 

of service, as that is “the basic record for action on all 

claims for annuity or refund.” 5 C.F.R. § 831.103(a). We 

have not determined the extent of OPM’s obligations to 

determine the correctness of the dates in an IRR, but we 

have held that “[f]urther inquiry” by the Board into the 

accuracy of an IRR “is required” in cases where an 

employee’s IRR contains internal contradictions. Grover v. 

Off. of Pers. Mgmt., 828 F.3d 1378, 1383–84 (Fed. Cir. 

2016). We assume, without deciding, that the IRR record 

is not conclusive even if it is not self-contradictory.3

Ms. Coggins contends that the Board erred by relying 

on her corrected IRR to identify her start and end dates for 

purposes of calculating her creditable service time. 

Ms. Coggins’s argument lacks merit. The Board’s decision 

demonstrates that, far from reflexively relying solely upon 

her corrected IRR, the Board reviewed the accuracy of the 

document and concluded that it was “accurate given the 

circumstances surrounding the overpayment,” and that 

“the evidence [Ms. Coggins] submitted [was] insufficient to 

invalidate any information contained in the corrected and 

certified IRR.” S. App’x 17. The Board considered evidence 

that corroborated the accuracy of Ms. Coggins’s start date 

3 Several of our nonprecedential decisions have 

endorsed interpretations of the regulations by OPM and 

the Board that an employee’s IRR is binding. See, e.g., 

Rainone v. Off. of Pers. Mgmt., 249 F. App’x 823, 825 (Fed. 

Cir. 2007). However, since our decision in Lisanti v. Office 

of Personnel Management, 573 F.3d 1334 (Fed. Cir. 2009), 

the Board has understood that it possesses the authority 

“to review the accuracy and completeness of IRRs in the 

context of appeals from OPM final decisions that rely on 

them.” Conner v. Off. of Pers. Mgmt., 2014 M.S.P.B. 26 ¶6

(2014), aff’d 620 F. App’x 892 (Fed. Cir. 2015). 

Case: 24-1503 Document: 33 Page: 5 Filed: 12/09/2024
6 COGGINS v. OPM

as stated in the IRR. This included “a letter from the VA 

dated October 11, 2013, stating the effective date of 

[Ms. Coggins’s] appointment was October 20, 2013,” 

S. App’x 17, and Ms. Coggins’s own testimony that her 

start date was “postponed due to the government[-]wide 

furlough” at the time, S. App’x 15. Substantial evidence 

supports the Board’s determinations as to Ms. Coggins’s 

start date.

Ms. Coggins next argues that the end date stated in her 

IRR was not correct. She contends that she should have 

received an additional 67.5 hours of creditable service 

because her IRR listed her last day of pay as April 10, 2014, 

and she received a payout for accrued leave after that time, 

on May 9, 2014. She states that the determination by 

DFAS that she should not have received payment after her 

last day of pay on April 10 was made in error. According to 

Ms. Coggins, the DFAS audit was predicated on the fact 

that she improperly received payment for accrued leave 

because she failed to submit request forms before taking 

certain periods of leave. Ms. Coggins argues that she did 

in fact submit the required forms to the VA. She was 

unable to locate those forms in time for her hearing but 

discovered them shortly thereafter and included them in 

her petition for review before the full Board, and on that 

basis, she argues that the full Board should have granted 

her petition for review. The government responds that this 

argument was not properly raised previously, so the Board 

correctly declined to address it. Whether the Board erred 

by not addressing the merits of Ms. Coggins’s claim is 

ultimately immaterial, because even if Ms. Coggins were 

correct, she would stand to gain only an additional 

67.5 hours of creditable time, which is insufficient to meet 

the required minimum 18 months of service.4

4 In her informal reply brief, Ms. Coggins also argues 

for the first time that she was previously employed by the 

Case: 24-1503 Document: 33 Page: 6 Filed: 12/09/2024
COGGINS v. OPM 7

We have considered Ms. Coggins’s other arguments 

and find them unpersuasive. 

AFFIRMED

Costs

No costs.

U.S. Postal Service as a seasonal worker for several months 

in 1998, which should have been considered creditable time 

under the FERS. Ms. Coggins concedes this is a “new 

argument” not previously raised before the Board. Pet’r 

Informal Reply Br. 4. As such, the argument is forfeited. 

See Bosley v. Merit Sys. Prot. Bd., 162 F.3d 665, 668 (Fed. 

Cir. 1998) (“A party in an MSPB proceeding must raise an 

issue before the administrative judge if the issue is to be 

preserved for review in this court.”).

Case: 24-1503 Document: 33 Page: 7 Filed: 12/09/2024