Court Opinion

ID: 9387019
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-04-14 15:01:31.781367+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:18:10.607069
License: Public Domain

Case: 22-2092    Document: 29    Page: 1    Filed: 04/14/2023

        NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.

   United States Court of Appeals
       for the Federal Circuit
                  ______________________

                RODNEY KEITH WRIGHT,
                   Claimant-Appellant

                            v.

       DENIS MCDONOUGH, SECRETARY OF
              VETERANS AFFAIRS,
               Respondent-Appellee
              ______________________

                        2022-2092
                  ______________________

     Appeal from the United States Court of Appeals for
 Veterans Claims in No. 22-1327, Judge Coral Wong Pi-
 etsch.
                 ______________________

                  Decided: April 14, 2023
                  ______________________

    RODNEY WRIGHT, Brooklyn, NY, pro se.

     YARIV S. PIERCE, Commercial Litigation Branch, Civil
 Division, United States Department of Justice, Washing-
 ton, DC, for respondent-appellee. Also represented by
 BRIAN M. BOYNTON, ERIC P. BRUSKIN, PATRICIA M.
 MCCARTHY; CHRISTOPHER O. ADELOYE, BRIAN D. GRIFFIN,
 Office of General Counsel, United States Department of
 Veterans Affairs, Washington, DC.
Case: 22-2092      Document: 29    Page: 2    Filed: 04/14/2023

 2                                     WRIGHT   v. MCDONOUGH

                    ______________________

         Before DYK, SCHALL, and CHEN, Circuit Judges.
 PER CURIAM.
     Mr. Rodney Keith Wright appeals an order of the
 United States Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims (Vet-
 erans Court) denying in part and dismissing in part
 Mr. Wright’s petition for extraordinary relief. Wright v.
 McDonough, No. 22-1327, 2022 WL 1184662, at *6 (Vet.
 App. Apr. 21, 2022) (Order). We affirm the Veterans
 Court’s order denying the petition and dismiss the parts of
 Mr. Wright’s appeal over which we do not have jurisdiction.
                         BACKGROUND
     Mr. Wright served in the United States Army Reserve
 from 1990 to 1997 and the United States Air Force Reserve
 from 1997 to 2006. Appx. 108. 1 On March 10, 2020,
 Mr. Wright applied for special monthly compensation
 (SMC) based on aid and attendance, claiming that his “cer-
 vical radiculopathy, carpal tunnel and right shoulder pain
 prevent[ed him] from preparing [his] own meals and re-
 quire[d] assistance with bathing and tending to other hy-
 giene needs.”     Appx. 95.     Mr. Wright underwent a
 Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) examination in Octo-
 ber 2020, and in November 2020, the Regional Office de-
 nied his claim. Appx. 92, 95.
     Mr. Wright filed a supplemental claim for SMC in No-
 vember 2020, which was denied in February 2021. Appx.
 86–87. In March 2021, Mr. Wright filed a Notice of Disa-
 greement (NOD) appealing this decision to the Board of
 Veterans’ Appeals (Board). Order, 2022 WL 1184662, at
 *1. A week later, the Board sent Mr. Wright a letter

     1   “Appx.” citations refer to the appendix filed concur-
 rently with Respondent’s brief.
Case: 22-2092     Document: 29      Page: 3    Filed: 04/14/2023

 WRIGHT   v. MCDONOUGH                                        3

 “confirming receipt of [Mr. Wright’s] NOD” and explaining
 “that [Mr. Wright’s] appeal had been placed on the direct
 review docket.” Id. Mr. Wright subsequently filed three
 motions to advance his appeal, all of which were denied.
 Id. at *5.
     In addition to these motions, Mr. Wright filed with the
 Veterans Court a petition for extraordinary relief in the
 form of a writ of mandamus. Mr. Wright’s petition asked
 the court to “compel [the Board] to issue a decision on his
 appeal seeking entitlement to [SMC] based on the need for
 aid and attendance.” Id. at *1. The Veterans Court denied
 Mr. Wright’s petition after a thorough analysis of the
 TRAC factors, id. at *2–3, and dismissed Mr. Wright’s
 other requests as moot, id. at *3–6. Mr. Wright appeals the
 court’s denial of his petition. 2
                          DISCUSSION
     Our jurisdiction to review decisions of the Veterans
 Court is limited by statute. See 38 U.S.C. § 7292. We may
 review “the validity of a decision of the Court on a rule of
 law or of any statute or regulation . . . or any interpretation
 thereof . . . that was relied on by the Court in making the
 decision.” 38 U.S.C. § 7292(a). We have “jurisdiction to re-
 view the [Veterans Court’s] decision whether to grant a
 mandamus petition that raises a non-frivolous legal ques-
 tion.” Beasley v. Shinseki, 709 F.3d 1154, 1158 (Fed. Cir.
 2013). Although we “may not review the factual merits of
 the veteran’s claim,” “we may determine whether the peti-
 tioner has satisfied the legal standard for issuing the writ.”
 Id. We review the Veterans Court’s denial of a petition for
 a writ of mandamus for abuse of discretion. See Lamb v.
 Principi, 284 F.3d 1378, 1384 (Fed. Cir. 2002).

     2   It appears Mr. Wright is only appealing the denial
 of his petition, not the dismissal by the Veterans Court of
 his other requests.
Case: 22-2092     Document: 29     Page: 4    Filed: 04/14/2023

 4                                      WRIGHT   v. MCDONOUGH

     When analyzing petitions based on alleged unreasona-
 ble delay by VA, the Veterans Court’s analysis is guided by
 the six TRAC factors:
     (1) the time agencies take to make decisions must
     be governed by a “rule of reason”;
     (2) where Congress has provided a timetable or
     other indication of the speed with which it expects
     the agency to proceed in the enabling statute, that
     statutory scheme may supply content for this rule
     of reason;
     (3) delays that might be reasonable in the sphere of
     economic regulation are less tolerable when human
     health and welfare are at stake;
     (4) the court should consider the effect of expediting
     delayed action on agency activities of a higher or
     competing priority;
     (5) the court should also take into account the na-
     ture and extent of the interests prejudiced by delay;
     and
     (6) the court need not find “any impropriety lurking
     behind agency lassitude” in order to hold that
     agency action is unreasonably delayed.
 Martin v. O’Rourke, 891 F.3d 1338, 1344–45, 1348 (Fed.
 Cir. 2018) (citing Telecomms. Rsch. & Action Ctr. v. FCC,
 750 F.2d 70, 79–80 (D.C. Cir. 1984) (TRAC)).
     Here, the Veterans Court concluded that while the
 third and fifth TRAC factors weigh in favor of granting the
 petition, the remaining factors weighed against it. Order,
 2022 WL 1184662, at *2–3. On the first two factors, the
 Veterans Court “under[stood] the petitioner’s frustration
 with the Board taking longer than average to issue a deci-
 sion on his appeal, but the Court [did] not find that the ‘de-
 lay is so egregious as to warrant mandamus.’” Id. at *2
 (quoting Martin, 891 F.3d at 1344). As to the fourth factor,
Case: 22-2092     Document: 29      Page: 5    Filed: 04/14/2023

 WRIGHT   v. MCDONOUGH                                        5

 the Veterans Court “not[ed] that the veterans’ benefits sys-
 tem is burdened with fixed resources, and VA is in a better
 position than the Court to evaluate how to use those lim-
 ited resources.” Id. at *3. It found “[g]ranting a writ in this
 case would merely shift the Board’s resources away from
 processing other veterans’ appeals that are ahead of the pe-
 titioner’s in the Board’s direct docket work queue.” Id. For
 these reasons, the Veterans Court concluded “the peti-
 tioner fail[ed] to demonstrate that he is entitled to the is-
 suance of a writ.” Id.
      Mr. Wright’s argument on appeal focuses on the first
 two TRAC factors. He argues the Veterans Court erred by
 looking to the date of his NOD—March 2021—to assess the
 degree of the VA’s delay in adjudicating his SMC claim,
 when the court should have looked to the date of his initial
 compensation claim—October 2011. See Order, 2022 WL
 1184662 at *1. In Mr. Wright’s view, because an SMC re-
 quest is part of every VA claim, and since his initial disa-
 bility compensation claim was filed in October 2011, this
 date is the proper date from which to determine whether
 his appeal regarding SMC has been timely decided. Appel-
 lant’s Supp. Br. 7. 3
      Although the Veterans Court does appear to consider
 an effective date for SMC to be “when the evidence first
 supported an award of SMC,” Bradley v. Peake, 22 Vet.
 App. 280, 294 (2008), “the overarching inquiry in analyzing
 a claim of unreasonable delay is whether the agency’s delay
 is so egregious as to warrant mandamus,” Martin, 891 F.3d
 at 1344 (internal quotations and citations omitted). Here,
 Mr. Wright’s mandamus petition seeks to compel the Board

     3     Mr. Wright filed a document concurrently with his
 informal brief entitled “Petition for Writ of Mandamus.”
 We consider this document to be a supplemental brief and
 cite it as “Appellant’s Supp. Br.,” referencing the page num-
 bers included at the bottom of the document.
Case: 22-2092    Document: 29      Page: 6   Filed: 04/14/2023

 6                                    WRIGHT   v. MCDONOUGH

 to issue a decision on his March 2021 appeal, a request that
 necessarily centers on the nature of any delay by the Board.
 Mr. Wright provides no authority for his argument, and we
 decline to adopt a broad rule stating the timeliness for
 Board action on pending appeals is assessed from a claim’s
 effective date. Thus, the Veterans Court did not abuse its
 discretion with respect to the first two TRAC factors.
 Mr. Wright’s arguments on the remaining factors are un-
 persuasive.
     Mr. Wright also raises various arguments character-
 ized as constitutional. However, an “appellant’s ‘character-
 ization of [a] question as constitutional in nature does not
 confer upon us jurisdiction that we otherwise lack.’” Flores
 v. Nicholson, 476 F.3d 1379, 1382 (Fed. Cir. 2007) (quoting
 Helfer v. West, 174 F.3d 1332, 1335 (Fed. Cir. 1999)).
 Mr. Wright’s allegedly constitutional arguments appear to
 simply reargue the merits of his case, issues over which we
 do not have jurisdiction. See id.
                        CONCLUSION
     We have considered Mr. Wright’s remaining argu-
 ments and find them unpersuasive. We affirm the Veter-
 ans Court’s order as to the writ of mandamus and dismiss
 those issues over which we lack jurisdiction.
     AFFIRMED-IN-PART AND DISMISSED-IN-PART
                           COSTS
 No costs.