Opinion ID: 802085
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Untimely Evidentiary Submissions

Text: First, Davis claims that Board erred by failing to consider the three arbitration awards he submitted. According to Davis, if the AJ and the Board “had taken these documents into consideration the outcome maybe would have been different.” In response, the agency argues that the Board “properly ruled that it need not consider the three arbitration decisions” because they: (1) were untimely introduced; and (2) ”involved unrelated arbitration proceedings for other parties.” Respondent’s Informal Br. 11. Because we agree with the agency on the first point, we need not address the second. Pursuant to the Board’s rules, “[o]nce the record closes, no additional evidence or argument will be accepted unless the party submitting it shows that the evidence was not readily available before the record closed.” 5 C.F.R. § 1201.114(i). The rules further provide that the Board has discretion to grant a petition for review where “[n]ew and material evidence is available that, despite due diligence, was not available when the record closed.” 5 C.F.R. § 1201.115(d)(2). Consistent with these principles, both this court and the Board have held that “a party submitting new evidence in connection with a petition for review must satisfy the burden of showing that the evidence is material and that it could not have been obtained earlier with the exercise of due diligence.” DAVIS v. USPS 8 Brenneman v. Office of Pers. Mgmt., 439 F.3d 1325, 1328 (Fed. Cir. 2006) (citations omitted). Here, the Board found that Davis failed to explain the relevance of the arbitration decisions and further failed to show that they were previously unavailable “despite his due diligence.” Final Decision, 2011 MSPB LEXIS 6950, at . Based on the record, we find no error in the Board’s decision. As previously noted, the AJ gave the parties until February 14, 2011 to submit any additional posthearing evidence. The AJ issued his initial decision on May 9, 2011, and Davis did not submit the arbitration awards until May 23, 2011 – over three months after the record closed for evidence. Davis failed to provide any explanation for this delay. And, because all three of the arbitration awards pre-date February 14, 2011 – the date the record closed for evidence – Davis cannot argue that his newly-submitted evidence “was not readily available before the record closed.” See 5 C.F.R. § 1201.114(i). Indeed, two of the three arbitration decisions were rendered in the mid-1990s, and the third was from 2009. Davis does not allege that he could not have obtained these documents earlier with the exercise of due diligence. Given these circumstances, and absent any explanation for the delay, we are unable to say that the Board abused its discretion by refusing to consider documents that were not part of the record before the AJ.