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Page Number: 13.0

10 

GEORGE v. MCDONOUGH 

Opinion of the Court 

Ordinary language aside, George tries to bolster his posi-
tion  with  analogies  to  precedent  from  other  contexts.    He 
invokes an array of cases explaining that a judicial decision
states what the statute “always meant,” Rivers v. Roadway 
Express, Inc., 511 U. S. 298, 313, n. 12 (1994), and an unau-
thorized regulation is a “ ‘nullity,’ ” Dixon v. United States, 
381 U. S. 68, 74 (1965).  True enough.  Those general prin-
ciples, however, do not dispose of the issue before us.  As-
sume George is right that the “sound condition” provision 
always required the VA to show that the veteran’s condition
was not later aggravated by service and that the 1961 reg-
ulation  conflicted  with  that  requirement.    We  would  still 
have to decide whether the Board’s application of that bind-
ing regulation is the kind of “clear and unmistakable error”
for  which  collateral  relief  is  available  under  38  U. S. C. 
§§5109A and 7111.  For the reasons we have explained, it
is not. 

And while George suggests otherwise, there is nothing in-
congruous about a system in which this kind of error—the
application  of  a  since-rejected  statutory  interpretation—
cannot be remedied after final judgment.  On the contrary,
and as the lower courts have explained, the VA’s longstand-
ing approach is consistent with the general rule that “[t]he
new  interpretation  of  a  statute  can  only  retroactively
[a]ffect  decisions  still  open  on  direct  review.”    Disabled 
American  Veterans  v.  Gober,  234  F. 3d  682,  698  (CA  Fed. 
2001) (citing Harper v. Virginia Dept. of Taxation, 509 U. S. 
86, 97 (1993)); see also Smith v. West, 11 Vet. App. 134, 138
(1998) (“ ‘New legal principles, even when applied retroac-
tively, do not apply to cases already closed’ ” (quoting Reyn-
oldsville Casket Co. v. Hyde, 514 U. S. 749, 758 (1995); al-
teration  omitted)).  That  limitation  serves  important
interests in finality, preventing narrow avenues for collat-
eral review from ballooning into “substitute[s] for ordinary
error  correction  through  appeal.”    Harrington  v.  Richter, 
562 U. S. 86, 102–103 (2011); see also United Student Aid