Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca13-14-07124/USCOURTS-ca13-14-07124-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Lydia C. Dover
Appellant
Robert A. McDonald
Appellee

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals 

for the Federal Circuit ______________________ 

LYDIA C. DOVER,

Claimant-Appellant

v.

ROBERT A. MCDONALD, SECRETARY OF 

VETERANS AFFAIRS,

Respondent-Appellee

______________________ 

2014-7124

______________________ 

Appeal from the United States Court of Appeals for 

Veterans Claims in No. 11-2648, Judge Robert N. Davis.

______________________ 

Decided: April 7, 2016

______________________ 

KENNETH M. CARPENTER, Law Offices of Carpenter 

Chartered, Topeka, KS, argued for claimant-appellant.

JESSICA COLE, Commercial Litigation Branch, Civil 

Division, United States Department of Justice, Washington, DC, argued for respondent-appellee. Also represented 

by BENJAMIN C. MIZER, ROBERT E. KIRSCHMAN, JR., SCOTT 

D. AUSTIN; Y. KEN LEE, BRIAN D. GRIFFIN, MARTIE 

ADELMAN, Office of General Counsel, United States Department of Veterans Affairs, Washington, DC.

______________________ 

Case: 14-7124 Document: 42-2 Page: 1 Filed: 04/07/2016
2 DOVER v. MCDONALD

Before LOURIE, REYNA, and CHEN, Circuit Judges.

REYNA, Circuit Judge. 

Appellant sought her attorney’s fees under the Equal 

Access to Justice Act (“EAJA”) after winning vacatur and 

remand from the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims 

(“Veterans Court”) to the Board for Veterans’ Appeals 

(“Board”). The Veterans Court denied fees, reasoning that 

the appellant was not the prevailing party because the 

remand order contemplated only dismissal by the Board 

rather than further agency proceedings. We reverse

because the remand order expressly contemplated, and 

the appellant received, further agency proceedings, sufficient for prevailing party status under our precedents. 

BACKGROUND

Mr. Jack Dover served in the United States Navy from 

1956 to 1960. In 1968, he filed a claim with the VA 

regional office (“RO”) for service-connected disability 

benefits relating to various conditions, including “palmar 

hyperkeratosis” in his left hand. His claim for the hand 

injury was denied, and he did not appeal. In 2004, Mr. 

Dover attempted to reopen the claim, but the RO found 

that he had not submitted new and material evidence to 

support reopening. 

In 2008, Mr. Dover requested that the VA review for 

clear and unmistakable error (“CUE”) its original 1968

decision and the 2004 refusal to reopen. In February

2009, the RO granted service connection based on new 

medical evidence and assigned an effective date of March 

23, 2006, the date of another request to reopen the claim 

for service connection. In December 2009, Mr. Dover 

appealed for an earlier effective date of March 4, 1968, 

but the RO found no CUE in its prior decisions. In January 2011, Mr. Dover responded with more detailed arguments, but in July of that year, the Board issued a final 

ruling of no CUE with respect to the effective date. 

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DOVER v. MCDONALD 3

Mr. Dover appealed to the Veterans Court. While the 

appeal was pending, he passed away. Mrs. Dover substituted into her husband’s appeal and argued that his 2008 

CUE claim was so lacking in specificity that the Board 

should have dismissed it without prejudice and without 

reaching the merits, as required by Board regulations. 

See 38 C.F.R. § 20.1404(b). She requested remand so she 

could refile the CUE claim with the requisite specificity. 

The VA conceded that it erred by failing to dismiss Mr. 

Dover’s non-specific CUE claim. 

The Veterans Court agreed that the case should have 

been dismissed, and it therefore vacated and remanded 

the Board’s decision. The Veterans Court did not order 

the Board to dismiss the case. Instead, it provided the 

Board with the following remand instructions: 

On consideration of the foregoing, the Court SETS 

ASIDE the Board’s July 22, 2011, decision, and 

REMANDS the matter for further proceedings 

consistent with this decision. In pursuing her 

claim on remand, the appellant will be free to 

submit additional evidence and argument in support of her claim, and the Board is required to 

consider any such evidence and argument. 

J.A. 68 (emphasis original). 

On remand, the Board dismissed Mr. Dover’s 2008 

claim without prejudice but treated the January 2011 

submission of additional arguments as a separate CUE 

claim. The Board then remanded the matter to the RO 

for consideration on the merits.

Mrs. Dover moved under the EAJA for attorney’s fees 

incurred in pursuing her appeal. The EAJA provides fees 

for a “prevailing party” when the government’s litigation 

position was not substantially justified. See 28 U.S.C. 

§ 2412(d). The Veterans Court rejected Mrs. Dover’s 

motion because it believed that its remand was for disCase: 14-7124 Document: 42-2 Page: 3 Filed: 04/07/2016
4 DOVER v. MCDONALD

missal and because our precedent in Halpern v. Principi, 

384 F.3d 1297 (Fed. Cir. 2004) prevents an appellant who 

wins a remand for dismissal from claiming “prevailing 

party” status. Mrs. Dover appeals to this court. We have 

jurisdiction under 38 U.S.C. § 7292(c).

On appeal, Mrs. Dover argues that the Veterans Court 

applied the wrong legal standard to determine whether 

she was the prevailing party. She argues that the standard is not whether her relief was limited to Board dismissal, but whether there was a change in the legal 

relationship of the parties. She argues that the Veterans 

Court’s decision changed her legal relationship with the 

Board because it permitted her to pursue her claim.

The VA counters that the Veterans Court correctly applied Halpern. In Halpern, we found that the appellant 

was not a “prevailing party” because the remand order 

“simply direct[ed] the Board to dismiss the action for lack 

of original jurisdiction.” Id. at 1306. The VA argues that, 

even though the Board granted Mrs. Dover additional 

proceedings following remand, Mrs. Dover was still not a 

prevailing party because the Board’s actions contravened 

the remand order, and there was therefore no change in 

the legal relationship of the parties.

DISCUSSION

We review an interpretation of the EAJA by the Veterans Court without deference. Jones v. Brown, 41 F.3d 

634, 637 (Fed. Cir. 1994). 

The EAJA provides that “a court shall award to 

a prevailing party other than the United States fees and 

other expenses . . . incurred by that party in any civil 

action . . . unless the court finds that the position of the 

United States was substantially justified or that special 

circumstances make an award unjust.” 28 U.S.C. 

§ 2412(d)(1)(A). To determine whether an appellant is the 

“prevailing party,” “the correct legal standard . . . is [that] 

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DOVER v. MCDONALD 5

a party must receive ‘at least some relief on the merits of 

his claim.’” Vaughn v. Principi, 336 F.3d 1351, 1356–57

(Fed. Cir. 2003) (quoting Buckhannon Bd. & Care Home, 

Inc. v. W. Va. Dep’t of Health & Human Res., 532 U.S. 

598, 603 (2001)). Relief on the merits requires a “material 

alteration of the legal relationship of the parties.” Buckhannon, 532 U.S. at 604; see also Former Emps. of 

Motorola Ceramic Prods. v. United States, 336 F.3d 1360, 

1364 (Fed. Cir. 2003) (“[T]o be a prevailing party, one 

must receive at least some relief on the merits, which 

alters the legal relationship of the parties.” (internal 

quotations and citations omitted)). 

Traditional examples of relief on the merits include 

judgments on the merits and consent decrees. See 

Vaughn, 336 F.3d at 1357; see also Tex. State Teachers 

Ass’n v. Garland Indep. Sch. Dist., 489 U.S. 782 (1989). 

In contrast, “[m]inimal relief resembling an interlocutory 

ruling that reverses a dismissal for failure to state a claim 

or a reversal of a directed verdict will not satisfy the 

statutory requirements to achieve prevailing party status.” Vaughn, 336 F.3d at 1357 (internal quotations 

omitted); see also Hewitt v. Helms, 482 U.S. 755 (1987); 

Hanrahan v. Hampton, 446 U.S. 754 (1980). 

Remand for further proceedings by a lower civil court

in the federal system is not typically considered relief on 

the merits. See, e.g., Hewitt, 482 U.S. at 762; Hanrahan, 

446 U.S. at 758–59. We have held, however, that remand 

to an administrative agency is different. See Motorola, 

336 F.3d at 1365. An appeal of an agency decision “is 

treated as a separate proceeding from the administrative 

proceeding, and a remand may [therefore] constitute the 

securing of relief on the merits.” Id. Consequently, we 

have held that where the remanding court has not retained jurisdiction, a remand to an administrative agency 

is relief on the merits if the remand was necessitated by 

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6 DOVER v. MCDONALD

agency error, and the remand calls for further agency 

proceedings. Id. at 1366. 

Here, the parties agree that the remand was necessitated by agency error, and the remanding court did not 

retain jurisdiction. The disputed issue is only whether 

the remand calls for further agency proceedings within 

the meaning of Motorola. 

The VA argues that the requirements of Motorola are 

not met because—notwithstanding the remand order’s 

call for “further proceedings”—the order as a whole suggested that those proceedings should be limited to dismissal. The VA relies on Halpern, in which we held that a 

remand instructing the agency to dismiss for lack of 

jurisdiction does not call for further agency proceedings 

within the meaning of Motorola. Halpern, 384 F.3d at 

1306. We disagree that Halpern dictates the outcome of 

this case.

Halpern is distinguishable from the present case. In 

Halpern we found “nothing in the Veterans’ Court’s 

disposition of this case that requires further agency 

proceedings.” Id. In contrast, the remand order here 

explicitly calls “for further proceedings.” J.A. 68. The 

order further instructs the Board that it must permit Mrs. 

Dover “to submit additional evidence and argument in 

support of her claim,” and that it is “required to consider 

any such evidence and argument.” Id. On remand, the 

Board complied with these instructions by granting Mrs. 

Dover further proceedings on the merits. Because the 

remand order both contemplated and precipitated further 

agency proceedings on the merits, we conclude that Mrs. 

Dover was the prevailing party. 

We are not persuaded by the VA’s argument that Mrs. 

Dover was not the prevailing party simply because the 

remand opinion indicated that the Board should have 

dismissed Mrs. Dover’s claim without prejudice. First, as 

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DOVER v. MCDONALD 7

noted above, the remand order called for further proceedings. Second, even if the remand order were understood 

as instructing the Board to dismiss the case without 

prejudice, that would not foreclose Mrs. Dover from being 

the prevailing party. In Motorola, we held that if the 

remanding court does not retain jurisdiction, a remand for 

agency error makes the appellant the prevailing party 

“without regard to the outcome of the agency proceedings.” Motorola, 336 F.3d at 1366. Because the ultimate 

merits determination is irrelevant, Halpern requires only 

that the remand leave the possibility of attaining a favorable merits determination through further agency proceedings. In Halpern, that possibility was foreclosed 

because the Veterans Court vacated on jurisdictional 

grounds. See Halpern, 384 F.3d at 1306. In this case, the 

possibility of a favorable merits determination was not 

foreclosed because the Veterans Court vacated on procedural grounds. The remand simply cleared a procedural 

hurdle (i.e., an adverse ruling on the merits with prejudice) so that Mrs. Dover could pursue additional proceedings on the merits.

Mrs. Dover was the prevailing party because the remand she won was necessitated by agency error, the 

remand called for—and Mrs. Dover received—further 

agency proceedings, and the Veterans Court did not 

retain jurisdiction. The Veterans Court’s determination 

the Mrs. Dover is not entitled to attorney’s fees under the 

EAJA as a prevailing party is therefore reversed. 

REVERSED

COSTS

Costs to Dover.

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