Court Opinion

ID: 9459904
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 21:35:05.527497+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:23.489670
License: Public Domain

LEVIN H. CAMPBELL, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
This is a close case, and I can appreciate the court’s position. Nonetheless, I think it unreasonable and perhaps even slightly outrageous to have expected the Board to treat as a request to reopen a doctor’s letter which was not transmitted to it by appellant or someone on his behalf. The Board might naturally assume that if appellant wanted it, apart from AFEES, to consider his mental suitability, he or someone on his behalf would have told it so. I agree with our holding in Ford, supra, that it is of little consequence whether the Board receives such a request to reopen from the registrant, his physician or someone else; further, the request need not be formal: it is enough if a request may be inferred from information sent. But I do not think that a Board should be faulted for not on its own leafing through medical files received from AFEES and spotting a prima facie claim. Especially since appellant never evinced any further desire to pursue the matter before the Board, I see no reason to treat the induction order as void. Its nullification in these circumstances seems an undeserved windfall.
485 F.2d — 45