NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential. 

United States Court of Appeals 

for the Federal Circuit ______________________ 

JOSEPH D. REAVES,

Plaintiff-Appellant

v.

UNITED STATES,

Defendant-Appellee

______________________ 

2021-2306

______________________ 

Appeal from the United States Court of Federal Claims 

in No. 1:16-cv-00141-ZNS, Judge Zachary N. Somers.

______________________ 

Decided: February 10, 2022 

______________________ 

JOSEPH D. REAVES, Philadelphia, PA, pro se.

 MARIANA TERESA ACEVEDO, Commercial Litigation 

Branch, Civil Division, United States Department of Justice, Washington, DC, for defendant-appellee. Also represented by BRIAN M. BOYNTON, DEBORAH ANN BYNUM,

MARTIN F. HOCKEY, JR. 

 ______________________ 

Before LOURIE, SCHALL, and TARANTO, Circuit Judges.

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2 REAVES v. US

TARANTO, Circuit Judge. 

Joseph D. Reaves joined the United States Army in

1981. While serving, he was diagnosed with ulcers. In 

1986, after initiation of court-martial proceedings against 

him, Mr. Reaves requested a “discharge for the good of the 

service” in lieu of continuation of the court-martial proceedings, and the Army granted his request and discharged 

him. Two decades later, in 2009, Mr. Reaves filed a petition 

with the Army Board for Correction of Military Records

(Board), arguing that he should have been given a retirement for physical disability under 10 U.S.C. § 1201. The 

Board rejected the contention and denied the petition. 

In 2016, Mr. Reaves brought the present action against 

the United States in the Court of Federal Claims (Claims 

Court) under the Tucker Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1491, arguing 

that the Board had erred and that he was entitled to disability retirement pay starting in 1983, when he allegedly 

should have been given a disability retirement because of 

his ulcers. The Claims Court dismissed the case for lack of 

subject-matter jurisdiction, relying on two independent 

grounds: first, that Mr. Reaves’s voluntary request for discharge deprived the court of Tucker Act jurisdiction over 

his case; second, that Mr. Reaves’s action was time-barred 

by 28 U.S.C. § 2501 because his claim had accrued upon 

discharge (in 1986), not when the Board denied his request 

for a correction. Reaves v. United States, 155 Fed. Cl. 137, 

142 (2021). Mr. Reaves appeals.

We reverse the dismissal for untimeliness. The accrual 

standard requires that Mr. Reaves have had sufficient 

knowledge of the permanent nature of the asserted disability at the time of his discharge. The Claims Court, relying 

only on the complaint, cited nothing that supports a determination of such knowledge; and it made no finding of fact 

about other record material. We vacate the dismissal 

based on the voluntary request for discharge, a dismissal 

the government did not seek in the Claims Court. We 

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REAVES v. US 3

conclude that the Claims Court did not support its determination that voluntary resignation defeats the entitlement at issue here, and that gap in support has not been 

filled by the government, which provides no elaboration on 

this ground in this court in defending the Claims Court’s 

holding. We remand for further proceedings. 

I 

Mr. Reaves enlisted in the Army on October 6, 1981. In 

1983, he was diagnosed with an ulcer, requiring hospitalization. But he “continued on active duty and reenlisted in 

the Army” (for a second three-year tour) in 1984. Reaves, 

155 Fed. Cl. at 140. In August 1986, he was diagnosed with 

a second ulcer. Id. That same year, Mr. Reaves faced 

court-martial charges; and to avoid continuation of the 

court-martial proceeding, Mr. Reaves “submitted a request 

for discharge for the good of the service.” Id. On November 

10, 1986, Mr. Reaves was discharged “under conditions 

other than honorable.” Id.

More than 22 years later, in May 2009, Mr. Reaves petitioned the Board “to request that his good of the service 

discharge be changed to a physical disability discharge” under 10 U.S.C. § 1201. Id. at 140–41. On February 17, 2010, 

the Board denied the petition, rejecting the contention that 

he should have been medically discharged based on the 

1983 ulcer. Id. at 141. Mr. Reaves submitted a request for 

reconsideration, and on June 2, 2011, the Board again denied his petition. Id.

On January 29, 2016, Mr. Reaves sued the United 

States in the Claims Court—within six years of the Board’s 

2010 and 2011 decisions. The premise of his action was 

that he had been entitled to a disability retirement under 

10 U.S.C. § 1201 in 1983 and that the Army had violated 

its own regulations in not referring him to a medical evaluation board, which, he alleged, would have found him unfit for duty. Therefore, Mr. Reaves argued, he was owed 

damages to compensate him for not having received 

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4 REAVES v. US

“disability payments that would have been made dating 

back to 1983[,] the time of the infraction.” Complaint at 3, 

Reaves v. United States, No. 1:16-cv-00141 (Fed. Cl. Jan. 

29, 2016), ECF No. 1 (Complaint). 

The government moved (a) to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction on timeliness grounds and (b) for judgment on the 

administrative record that substantial evidence supported 

the Board’s determination that Mr. Reaves was not entitled to a disability retirement. Motion to Dismiss and, in 

the Alternative, for Judgment upon the Administrative 

Record at 1, Reaves v. United States, No. 1:16-cv-00141 

(Fed. Cl. May 31, 2016), ECF No. 12. As to the jurisdictional timeliness ground, asserted under Court of Federal 

Claims Rule 12(b)(1), the government based its argument 

on the fact that Mr. Reaves “was provided counsel and notified of his rights, as outlined in Army Regulation 635-200, 

Chapter 10,” when he submitted his request for discharge. 

Id. at 15. 

The Claims Court dismissed the case for lack of jurisdiction on two grounds. Reaves, 155 Fed. Cl. at 142. The 

first was a ground not explicitly argued by the government. 

Specifically, the court concluded that Mr. Reaves’s “voluntary request to be discharged for the good of the service in 

lieu of facing a trial by court-martial, and his subsequent 

discharge, deprive[d] [the Claims Court] of jurisdiction.” 

Id. (citing Sammt v. United States, 780 F.2d 31 (Fed. Cir. 

1985)). 

The second ground was, as the government argued, 

that Mr. Reaves’s action was time-barred under the sixyear rule of 28 U.S.C. § 2501 because he filed the action far 

more than six years after his claims accrued. Id. at 145. In 

support of that conclusion, the court noted the “general 

rule” that a disability retirement claim accrues when a military corrections board finally denies that claim, but it invoked an exception “‘when the service member has 

sufficient actual or constructive notice of his disability, and 

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REAVES v. US 5

hence, of his entitlement to disability retirement pay, at 

the time of his discharge.’” Id. (quoting Chambers v. 

United States, 417 F.3d 1218, 1226 (Fed. Cir. 2005)). Citing the complaint, and nothing else, the court determined 

that Mr. Reaves had admitted to the required notice. Id.

at 145–46.

Mr. Reaves timely appeals. We have jurisdiction under 

28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(3).

II

The Claims Court relied only on the complaint in dismissing the case for lack of jurisdiction because of untimeliness. We review the dismissal de novo, taking as true all 

undisputed facts asserted in the complaint and drawing all 

reasonable inferences in favor of the plaintiff. Trusted Integration, Inc. v. United States, 659 F.3d 1159, 1163 (Fed. 

Cir. 2011).

“Every claim of which the United States Court of Federal Claims has jurisdiction shall be barred unless the petition thereon is filed within six years after such claim first 

accrues.” 28 U.S.C. § 2501. Compliance with that timing 

rule is a “jurisdictional” requirement. John R. Sand & 

Gravel Co. v. United States, 552 U.S. 130, 133–34 (2008). 

A claim “accrues as soon as all events have occurred that 

are necessary to enable the plaintiff to bring suit, i.e., when 

‘all events have occurred to fix the Government’s alleged 

liability, entitling the claimant to demand payment and 

sue . . . for his money.’” Martinez v. United States, 333 F.3d 

1295, 1303 (Fed. Cir. 2003) (en banc) (quoting Nager Elec.

Co. v. United States, 368 F.2d 847, 851 (Ct. Cl. 1966)); see 

also Petrella v. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Inc., 572 U.S. 663, 

670 (2014) (“A claim ordinarily accrues when a plaintiff has 

a complete and present cause of action. In other words, the 

limitations period generally begins to run at the point 

when the plaintiff can file suit and obtain relief.” (cleaned 

up)).

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6 REAVES v. US

We have held that, in general, “claims of entitlement to 

disability retirement pay generally do not accrue until the 

appropriate military board either finally denies such a 

claim or refuses to hear it.” Chambers, 417 F.3d at 1224 

(citing Real v. United States, 906 F.2d 1557, 1560 (Fed. Cir. 

1990)). But we also have recognized an exception that is 

crucial for the present case. Referring to the military 

boards available for consideration of disability justifying 

retirement, we have ruled that such a claim accrues earlier, i.e., at discharge, when a veteran’s “knowledge of the 

existence and extent of his condition at the time of discharge” is “sufficient to justify concluding that he waived 

the right to board review of the service’s finding of fitness 

by failing to demand a board prior to his discharge.” Real, 

906 F.2d at 1562. We have added that whether a veteran 

in a particular case had such knowledge “must be determined by reference to the statutory requirements for disability retirement, namely, 10 U.S.C. § 1201,” which 

includes a requirement that the disability is of a permanent nature. Chambers, 417 F.3d at 1226. We said in 

Chambers: “The appropriate inquiry under Real, therefore, 

is whether at the time of his separation from the Army in 

1970, Chambers knew that he was entitled to disability retirement due to a permanent disability that was not a result of his intentional misconduct and was serviceconnected.” Id. And we applied that standard to rule for 

the claimant in Chambers, concluding that, on the record,

Chambers did not have such knowledge, because the “medical diagnoses Chambers received prior to discharge . . . all 

indicated that his condition was minor, temporary, and circumstantial,” “[n]othing in the record indicate[d] that 

Chambers considered these diagnoses to be erroneous,” 

and “he was returned to regular duty after his brief hospitalizations.” Id. at 1226–27. 

The Claims Court in this case incorrectly held based on 

the complaint that the exception applies to Mr. Reaves, 

concluding that his claim accrued upon his discharge in 

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REAVES v. US 7

1986. Mr. Reaves asserted in his complaint that he was 

hospitalized with an ulcer in 1983 and that the Army failed 

to follow its own regulations in not referring him to a medical evaluation board or a physical evaluation board. Complaint at 1–3. Mr. Reaves asserts now that such an 

evaluation would have found him unfit for duty and resulted in a disability retirement pursuant to 10 U.S.C. 

§ 1201, but those assertions do not speak to whether, in 

1983, Mr. Reaves himself had sufficient knowledge (for the 

Real/Chambers inference) that the condition was permanently disabling, as required by § 1201. The Claims Court 

determined based on the complaint only that Mr. Reaves 

“had knowledge of his disability at the time.” Reaves, 155 

Fed. Cl. at 145. But the complaint does not show that Mr. 

Reaves knew of the permanence of his disability, at least 

when reasonable inferences are made in his favor. 

The Claims Court’s dismissal therefore must be reversed. The Claims Court did not look to the record beyond 

the complaint and make factual findings about whether 

Mr. Reaves knew of the permanent nature of his disability. 

Reaves, 155 Fed. Cl. at 145. In reversing the dismissal that 

is before us, we do not foreclose such a factual determination about timeliness—specifically, about Mr. Reaves’s

awareness of the permanent nature of his disability at the 

time of discharge.

III

We vacate the Claims Court’s ruling that Mr. Reaves’s 

request for discharge for the good of the service deprived 

the court of jurisdiction. The Claims Court did not provide 

a sufficient basis for the crucial conclusion that such a request serves to eliminate the entitlement at issue here, i.e., 

a claim to disability retirement pay.

In Moyer v. United States, 190 F.3d 1314 (Fed. Cir. 

1999), which the Claims Court cited here, we established 

that whether voluntary resignation defeats a benefit claim 

depends on the particular benefit. The relevant facts in 

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8 REAVES v. US

Moyer are similar to the facts of this case. While serving 

in the Army, Moyer sought a medical evaluation for certain

injuries. Id. at 1316. In addition, facing court-martial proceedings, he “submitted a request for resignation, apparently to avoid trial by court-martial,” indicating that “he 

was voluntarily [resigning] for the good of the service”; 

thereafter, he was “discharged without regard to any disability.” Id. After unsuccessfully seeking relief from the 

Board, Moyer sued in the Claims Court “to correct his military records to show that he was discharged due to physical disability” and sought “back pay, allowances, 

retirement pay, and severance pay.” Id. Unlike Mr. 

Reaves, Moyer also argued that his resignation had not 

been voluntary. Id. at 1316–17.

We first acknowledged that our previous decision in 

Sammt had held that a voluntary resignation barred jurisdiction over a claim seeking back pay, i.e., pay the claimant 

allegedly would have received as a continuing employee

had the asserted error not been committed. Id. at 1318 (citing Sammt, 780 F.2d at 32–33). But this did not end our 

inquiry. We explained that “Sammt never argued, as Moyer [did], that he was entitled to compensation under mandatory Army regulations, regardless of whether his 

retirement was voluntary or involuntary.” Id. at 1319. 

And the only payment that Sammt sought was back pay

(for but-for-the-error continued employment), see Sammt, 

780 F.2d at 32, an entitlement that he lost upon resignation, Moyer, 190 F.3d at 1318–19, whereas Moyer’s resignation did not extinguish his claim to entitlements that 

were not contingent on continued military service. Id. at 

1319. After concluding that Moyer’s resignation was voluntary, we proceeded to consider the merits of Moyer’s regulatory violation claim that he should have been given a 

medical discharge. Id. at 1320–21.

Here, the Claims Court did not consider the merits of 

Mr. Reaves’s challenge to the Board’s rejection of the contention that the Army erred in not awarding him a 

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REAVES v. US 9

disability retirement in 1983 when he had his first ulcer. 

Despite the similarity of this case with Moyer, the Claims 

Court concluded that Mr. Reaves’s “request for a discharge 

for the good of the service, in conjunction with the fact that 

his resulting discharge was under other than honorable 

conditions, ended his entitlement to disability benefits.” 

Reaves, 155 Fed. Cl. at 144. But the Claims Court gave no 

adequate justification for that conclusion, which precluded 

consideration of the merits of Mr. Reaves’s challenge.

The first rationale the Claims Court stated was that “a 

discharge for the good of the service takes precedence over 

a medical discharge, requiring the servicemember requesting such a discharge to forfeit any right to a medical discharge.” Id. That statement, on which the Claims Court 

did not elaborate, suggests a premise that any non-medical 

discharge voluntarily requested effects a forfeiture of the 

right to a medical discharge, but that proposition is unsupported by law and contrary to our precedents. See Beckham 

v. United States, 392 F.2d 619, 625 n.9 (Ct. Cl. 1968) (“The 

fact that plaintiff chose to separate voluntarily does not 

lessen the Government’s obligation to pay disability retirement if plaintiff actually had an incapacitating disease at 

the time of separation.”); McHenry v. United States, 367 

F.3d 1370, 1378 (Fed. Cir. 2004) (“[E]ven a member of the 

armed forces who retires voluntarily may still seek disability benefits . . . .”).

The Claims Court’s second rationale was that “a specific consequence of being discharged under other than 

honorable conditions is the loss of Army benefits,” citing 

Army Regulation 635-200 generally. Reaves, 155 Fed. Cl. 

at 144. We do not discern such a categorical rule in the

regulation in effect when Mr. Reaves was discharged. See

Army Regulation 635-200, Personnel Separations: Enlisted 

Personnel (Sept. 15, 1986 update, effective Oct. 15, 1986). 

The provision that seems most relevant states, “Consulting 

counsel will advise the soldier [submitting a request for discharge for the good of the service] concerning . . . [l]oss of 

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10 REAVES v. US

Veterans Administration [VA] benefits.” Id. at 41 (subchapter “10–2. Personal decision”). That provision requires 

only that the Army provide advice that acknowledges the 

potential risk of losing VA benefits if a soldier requests discharge for the good of the service. But while a soldier discharged for the good of the service “normally” receives a 

discharge under other than honorable conditions, and benefits from VA are presumptively unavailable to most soldiers so discharged (subject to case-by-case 

determinations), see 38 U.S.C. § 5303, retirement pay is not 

a VA benefit: It is administered by the Department of Defense. 10 U.S.C. § 1461. 

Thus, the Claims Court failed to set forth an adequate 

basis for concluding that Mr. Reaves lost his entitlement to 

retirement pay by requesting discharge for the good of the 

service. Moreover, the Claims Court did not explain why, 

if Mr. Reaves had been erroneously denied a medical discharge in 1983, his later-requested discharge in 1986, 

which would not have occurred but for the Army’s error, 

should still function as a waiver of his claim.

The government has not provided further support for 

the Claims Court’s conclusion on this point. Gov’t Inf. Br. 

5. On this record and considering the reasoning before us, 

we cannot sustain the Claims Court’s conclusion that Mr. 

Reaves’s request for a discharge for the good of the service 

deprives the court of Tucker Act jurisdiction to adjudicate 

a claim for disability retirement based on the alleged regulatory violations. We vacate the dismissal and remand. 

IV

For the foregoing reasons, we reverse in part and vacate in part the Claims Court’s dismissal of the case for lack 

of subject-matter jurisdiction and remand for further proceedings.

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REAVES v. US 11

Costs awarded to appellant.

REVERSED IN PART, VACATED IN PART, AND 

REMANDED

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