Opinion ID: 3066233
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: facts

Text: Mr. Mathis served on active duty in the U.S. Army from June 1968 to September 1969, and was engaged in combat service in the Republic of Vietnam. During his service, Mr. Mathis was injured by a gunshot wound to the left side of his head. In October 1969, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs regional office (“RO”) awarded Mr. Mathis a disability rating of 20%, wherein the first 10% arose from a scar as a residual of the gunshot wound, and the second 10% arose from headaches and tinnitus as a result of the trauma, under diagnostic code 9304 for organic brain syndrome (“OBS”). In January 1979, the RO increased Mr. Mathis’s disability rating for OBS from 10% to 50%, resulting in a combined disability rating of 60%, which satisfied one criterion for TDIU. See 38 C.F.R. § 4.16(a). The RO also found individual unemployability and granted Mr. Mathis TDIU with an effective date of October 17, 1978. MATHIS v. MCDONALD 3 In March 1979, the RO requested a new medical ex- amination and, this time, the examiner determined there was no basis for Mr. Mathis’s OBS diagnosis. Finding that the evidence no longer warranted sustaining a 50% rating, the RO reduced Mr. Mathis’s disability rating for OBS from 50% to 30%. As a result, the RO concluded that Mr. Mathis no longer met the requirements for TDIU. From the RO’s March 1979 decision sprung a number of appeals and remands. The first line of decisions addressed an issue not on appeal here—Mr. Mathis’s contention that the March 1979 decision to reduce his disability rating from 50% to 30% contained clear and unmistakable error (“CUE”). Specifically, the Board found the RO’s decision did not contain CUE, but the Veterans Court vacated and remanded. The Board, on remand, again determined that the 1979 decision did not contain CUE, but the Veterans Court again reversed and remanded, this time with directions for the Board to restore Mr. Mathis’s 50% disability rating for OBS. Important to the present appeal, the Veterans Court noted in its 2008 decision that it lacked jurisdiction to address Mr. Mathis’s additional argument that the March 1979 decision also involved CUE with respect to the denial of TDIU, as this was a distinct theory of CUE that had not been previously presented to the RO and adjudicated by the Board. On remand, the Board restored Mr. Mathis’s disability rating for OBS to 50%, found that it, too, lacked jurisdiction over the issue of whether there was CUE in the March 1979 denial of TDIU, and remanded that matter back to the RO. Thereafter, the Veterans Court affirmed the Board’s restoration of Mr. Mathis’s 50% disability rating for OBS as well as its referral of the TDIU matter back to the RO. On appeal to this court, we summarily affirmed and dismissed-in-part. Meanwhile, in a second line of decisions relevant to this appeal, the RO found in February 2011 that its March 1979 decision to deny Mr. Mathis entitlement to 4 MATHIS v. MCDONALD TDIU did not contain CUE. Mr. Mathis filed a notice of disagreement, but no further action was taken by the RO. In December 2013, the Board determined that because the RO had not taken any action in response to Mr. Mathis’s notice of disagreement, the matter must be remanded to the RO for issuance of a statement of the case (“SOC”), during which proceedings Mr. Mathis could submit additional evidence and argument. Mr. Mathis appealed the Board’s remand decision to the Veterans Court. In a single-judge order in August 2014, that court dismissed his appeal for lack of jurisdiction on grounds that the Board’s remand decision for a SOC was not a final appealable decision. In that same decision, the Veterans Court also denied Mr. Mathis’s motions for an extension of a stay of proceedings to obtain counsel and for reassignment of the case to another judge. Following the single-judge decision, Mr. Mathis filed a motion for panel review (which was granted, following which the panel adopted the single-judge order as the decision of the court) and a motion for panel and full-court reconsideration (which was denied). Mr. Mathis now appeals to us.