N OTE : This disposition is nonprecedential. 

# United States **Court of Appeals**  **for the Federal Circuit**

______________________

RONALD JONES, JR.,
Claimant

- Appellant,

v.

Eric K. S hinseki, SECRETARY OF VETERANS AFFAIRS, Respondent

- Appellee.

______________________

2012

- 7112

______________________

Appeal from the United States Court of Appeals for
Veterans Claims in No. 10

- 1618, Judge Donald L. Ivers.

______________________

Decided: May 9, 2013

______________________

S EAN A. R AVIN , of Washington, DC, for claimant

appellant.

S ARAH M. B IENKOWSKI , Trial Attorney, Commercial Litigation Branch, Civil Division, United States Depar tment of Justice, of Washington, DC, for respondent

appellee. With her on the brief were S TUA RT F. D ELERY

, Acting Assistant Attorney General, J EANNE E. D AVIDSON

, Director, and M ARTIN F. H OCKEY

, J R

. , Assistant Director.

Of counsel on the brief were D AVID J. B ARRANS , Deputy Assistant General Counsel, and C HRISTA A. S HRIBER

,RONALD JONES

, JR

. v. SHINSEKI 2

Attorney, United States Department of Veterans Affairs, of Washington, DC.

______________________

Before D YK

, B RYSON

, and R EYNA

, Circuit Judges.

P ER C URIAM

.

D ECISION

Appellant Ronald Jones, Jr., seeks to appeal from a decision of the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims (“CAVC”), which upheld a ruling of the Board of Veterans’ Appeals denying his claim of service connection for a psychiatric disorder. Because we lack jurisdiction to address the issues raised by Mr. Jones, we dismiss the appeal.

B ACKGROUND

Mr. Jones serve d on active duty with the United States Navy from 1967 to 1969. Shortly after his di scharge, he filed a claim for compensation for “bruises on face and head as a result of mugging . . . as well as dizz iness [and] slight shock.” Mr. Jones testified that h e believed the mugging occurred in February of 1969. A regional office of the Veterans Administration (“VA”) denied his claim. On several occasions since that time, he has sought to reopen his claim. He has asserted that the psychiatric condition from w hich he suffers (paranoid schizophrenia) is attributable to the head injury he i ncurred in service and that he is entitled to disability compensation on that basis.

As part of its response to a claim Mr. Jones filed in 1999, the Department of Veterans Affa irs (“DVA”) sought records relating to his contention that he had been injured during a mugging in February of 1969. Based on Mr.
Jones’s claim that he was assaulted either in Jacksonville or in Pensacola, Florida, and was treated at a hospital following his injury, the DVA sought records relating to the claimed assault and injury from both the JacksonvilleRONALD JONES

, JR

. v. SHINSEKI 3

Sheriff’s Department and the Pensacola Police Depar tment, and from Naval hospitals in both of those cities. The DVA received responses from each agenc y, but none of them reported having records relating to Mr. Jones.

After further proceedings, including a remand from the Board to the regional office and a subsequent remand from the CAVC and the Board for further development of Mr. Jones’s claim, the Boa rd ultimately denied his claim in 2010 on the ground that there was no evidence that his psychiatric disorder was related to any disease or injury suffered in service. In the course of its opinion, the Board held that the DVA had satisfied its duty to ass ist Mr. Jones in obtaining records relating to his claim.

The CAVC affirmed. With respect to Mr. Jones’s a rgument that the DVA did not satisfy its statutory and regulatory duty to assist him in developing his claim, the
court ruled that the DVA had attem pted to obtain add itional records identified by Mr. Jones and that the court discerned “no inadequacy in the Secretary’s performance of his duty to assist in obtaining records.” The court
added that Mr. Jones “was informed in detail of the failed
attempts to obtain records and made no attempt to either provide missing records or provide more specific detail regarding the records” before the Board issued its dec ision.

D ISCUSSION

In his appeal to this court, Mr. Jones focuses on the DVA’s request for medical records from the Pensacola Naval Hospital pertaining to any treatment Mr. Jones received for a head injury in February 1969. In its r equest, the DVA provided the hospital with Mr. Jones’s social security number, his branch of service and service number, and the approximate dates on which Mr. Jones contended he may have received medical treatment at that facility. The hospital responded with a form letter in which the supervisor of medical records reported that the hospital had been unable to identify rec ords relating toRONALD JONES

, JR

. v. SHINSEKI 4

Mr. Jones, but added, “If you can provide any additional information such as social security number . . . date of birth, whether patient is retired, a veteran, active duty or dependent, or date of hospitalization, we will search our
files further.”

Mr. Jones contends that after receiving that letter from the Pensacola Naval Hospital, the DVA should have taken further steps to obtain records from that instit ution. He argues that because the hospital “asked VA to provide additional identif ying information regarding Mr.
Jones in order to further search its files” and the DVA “did not respond with any additional identifying info rmation,” the DVA failed to satisfy its duty to assist him in developing his claim. In its response, the government points out that the DVA had already provided identifying information, including Mr. Jones’s social security number, the fact that Mr. Jones was a former service member (as indicated by the references to his service number and the branch of the military in which he served), and the dates of his possible treatment. The government argues that in light of the hospital’s inability to locate any pertinent
records even with the aid of the information the DVA had sent with its request, it was reasonable for the D VA to
conclude that it would have been futile to resubmit the same information to the hospital in a follow

- up request.

Mr. Jones characterizes the issue before this court as a pure legal question arising from undisputed facts

— whether the statutory and regu latory duty to assist, see 38 U.S.C. § 5103A; 38 C.F.R. § 3.159(c)(2), required the DVA to make a further request for information to the Pensacola Naval Hospital after the hospital “asked VA to provide additional identifying information in order to
further search its files; and . . . VA did not respond with any additional information.”

Mr. Jones’s characterization of the facts overlooks two points. First, the Pensacola hospital did not “ask[] VA to provide additional identifying information”; rather, the hospital stated that if the DVA could provide “any add i-RONALD JONES

, JR

. v. SHINSEKI 5

tional information,” such as a social security number, date of birth, status of the patient, and date of treatment, the hospital would be willing to search its files further. Second, and more importantly, the DVA had already provided all of that information except for Mr. Jones’s date of birth. It was based on that state of the record, which presents a quite different factual picture from the one painted by Mr. Jones, that the CAVC ruled that the

cou rt could “discern no inadequacy in the Secretary’s performance of his duty to assist in obtaining records.”

Moreover, contrary to Mr. Jones’s contention, the court’s conclusion as to the adequacy of the DVA’s conduct in light of its statutory and regulator y duty to assist Mr. Jones does not entail an interpretation of a statute or regulation . The CAVC ’s decision did not turn on its interpretation of the statute or regulation requiring the DVA to assist claimants in developing their claims, but at

most cons tituted the resolution of “a challenge to a law or regulation as applied to the facts of a particular case,” and thus is not within this court’s jurisdiction to review dec isions of the CAVC. See 38 U.S.C. § 7292(d)(2). Because this appeal does not fall within our jurisdiction over appeals from the CAVC, we dismiss Mr. Jones’s appeal.

No costs.

DISMISSED