Court Opinion

ID: 9896089
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-11-09 16:00:47.226104+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:13:57.113064
License: Public Domain

Case: 22-1922   Document: 45     Page: 1    Filed: 11/09/2023

        NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.

   United States Court of Appeals
       for the Federal Circuit
                 ______________________

                 LAURA A. LIMBRICK,
                      Petitioner

                            v.

      MERIT SYSTEMS PROTECTION BOARD,
                    Respondent
              ______________________

                       2022-1922
                 ______________________

    Petition for review of the Merit Systems Protection
 Board in No. DA-0752-21-0293-I-1.
                 ______________________

                Decided: November 9, 2023
                 ______________________

     JENNIFER DUKE ISAACS, Melville Johnson, P.C., At-
 lanta, GA, argued for petitioner.

    STEPHEN FUNG, Office of General Counsel, United
 States Merit Systems Protection Board, Washington, DC,
 argued for respondent. Also represented by ALLISON JANE
 BOYLE, KATHERINE MICHELLE SMITH.
                  ______________________

     Before LOURIE, REYNA, and CHEN, Circuit Judges.
Case: 22-1922    Document: 45      Page: 2    Filed: 11/09/2023

 2                                           LIMBRICK v. MSPB

 PER CURIAM.
      Laura A. Limbrick appeals a final order of the Merit
 Systems Protection Board (Board) that denied her petition
 for review and affirmed the Board’s initial decision in Lim-
 brick v. Department of the Treasury, No. DA-0752-21-0293-
 I-1, 2021 WL 3146401 (M.S.P.B. July 19, 2021) (Initial De-
 cision), which dismissed Ms. Limbrick’s appeal to the
 Board as being untimely filed without good cause. Lim-
 brick v. Dep’t of the Treasury, No. DA-0752-21-0293-I-1,
 2022 WL 1310834, at *1 (M.S.P.B. Apr. 27, 2022) (Final Or-
 der). Because we do not believe the Board abused its dis-
 cretion in considering Ms. Limbrick’s appeal to the Board
 to be untimely filed without good cause, we affirm.
                      BACKGROUND
      On January 30, 2020, the Internal Revenue Service
 (IRS) removed Ms. Limbrick from her position as a revenue
 officer. Initial Decision, 2021 WL 3146401. During an in-
 person meeting a day before her removal that Ms. Limbrick
 concedes to have attended, the IRS served its removal de-
 cision to Ms. Limbrick. Id. That decision informed
 Ms. Limbrick of her right to appeal to the Board and indi-
 cated that she must file an appeal no later than 30 calendar
 days after receiving the decision. J.A. 29–30.
     Ms. Limbrick filed her appeal to the Board on June 7,
 2021, 15 months after the deadline. Final Order, 2022 WL
 1310834, at *2 & n.2; Initial Decision, 2021 WL 3146401.
 In its initial decision, the Board determined that Ms. Lim-
 brick untimely filed her appeal and failed to show good
 cause for waiving the filing deadline. Initial Decision, 2021
 WL 3146401. In reaching this determination, the Board
 considered (1) the almost year-and-a-half delay in
 Ms. Limbrick’s filing, (2) Ms. Limbrick’s pro se status,
 (3) Ms. Limbrick’s displacement from her permanent resi-
 dence from June 2019 to January 2021, (4) Ms. Limbrick’s
 concession that she was able to manage complex tasks in
 her life while she was displaced, (5) Ms. Limbrick’s
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 LIMBRICK v. MSPB                                           3

 acknowledgment that she received the IRS’s removal deci-
 sion, (6) Ms. Limbrick’s representation that she was con-
 fused about the contents of the removal decision, and
 (7) the hospitalizations of Ms. Limbrick’s daughter in Feb-
 ruary 2021 and April 2021. Id. Weighing these factors, the
 Board concluded that Ms. Limbrick failed to establish good
 cause for her delay in filing the appeal. Id.
     Following the Board’s initial decision, Ms. Limbrick
 submitted a petition for review by the full Board. Final
 Order, 2022 WL 1310834, at *1. In its final order, the
 Board denied the petition and affirmed the Board’s initial
 decision. Id. Ms. Limbrick timely appealed this final order
 to us.    We have jurisdiction pursuant to 5 U.S.C.
 § 7703(b)(1)(A) and 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(9).
                         DISCUSSION
     “If a party does not submit an appeal [to the MSPB]
 within the time set by statute, regulation, or order of a
 [Board] judge, it will be dismissed as untimely filed unless
 a good reason for the delay is shown.” Kerr v. Merit Sys.
 Prot. Bd., 908 F.3d 1307, 1311 (Fed. Cir. 2018) (alterations
 in original) (quoting 5 C.F.R. § 1201.22(c)). “The appellant
 bears the burden of establishing ‘good cause’ for the delay.”
 Id. “To establish good cause for a filing delay, an appellant
 must show that the delay was excusable under the circum-
 stances and that the appellant exercised due diligence in
 attempting to meet the filing deadline.” Herring v. Merit
 Sys. Prot. Bd., 778 F.3d 1011, 1017 (Fed. Cir. 2015) (inter-
 nal quotation marks omitted). “The decision to waive the
 time limit to appeal to the Board is committed to the dis-
 cretion of the Board, and is reversed only for abuse of that
 discretion.” Id. at 1013.
     We do not believe the Board abused its discretion in
 finding Ms. Limbrick’s petition to be untimely filed without
 good cause. The Board found that “[m]ost significantly,
 [Ms. Limbrick’s] appeal [was] late by nearly a year and a
 half as opposed to a few days.” Initial Decision, 2021 WL
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 4                                           LIMBRICK v. MSPB

 3146401. The Board then considered the personal circum-
 stances raised by Ms. Limbrick and found that they ulti-
 mately did not amount to good cause. Id.
      Ms. Limbrick’s arguments on appeal fail to establish
 an abuse of discretion. Ms. Limbrick repeats several argu-
 ments that she presented to the Board. For example,
 Ms. Limbrick contends that (1) her displacement from her
 home was a circumstance beyond her control that nega-
 tively impacted her ability to work and deprived her of ac-
 cess to her medical assistive technology, (2) when she was
 removed, she did not receive Standard Form 50, did not
 have the opportunity to ask questions, did not have a clear
 understanding of the removal process, and did not realize
 that she had an appeal deadline that ran from the date of
 her removal, and (3) her daughter’s hospitalizations in
 February 2021 and in April 2021 further prevented her
 from timely filing her appeal. The Board, however, consid-
 ered each of these arguments and their underlying facts
 and concluded that they did not establish good cause. Ini-
 tial Decision, 2021 WL 3146401. Ms. Limbrick does not
 identify any specific factor that the MSPB failed to consider
 but should have considered. See Herring, 778 F.3d at
 1018–19 (reversing the Board’s determination of no good
 cause because the Board failed to consider a factor that it
 had “previously treated as significant”). Nor does Ms. Lim-
 brick allege that the Board had a mistaken understanding
 of the facts. While we are sympathetic to Ms. Limbrick’s
 personal circumstances, we are unpersuaded that the
 Board abused its discretion in concluding that no good
 cause existed to excuse Ms. Limbrick’s significant delay in
 filing her appeal to the Board.
     Ms. Limbrick further contends that the IRS never al-
 leged that it experienced any prejudice due to the delay.
 But Ms. Limbrick “has the burden of initially showing that
 there was good cause for the delay,” and only if she carried
 that burden was the IRS “required to submit evidence that
 the untimely appeal would prejudice it.” Womack v. Merit
Case: 22-1922       Document: 45    Page: 5   Filed: 11/09/2023

 LIMBRICK v. MSPB                                           5

 Sys. Prot. Bd., 798 F.2d 453, 456 (Fed. Cir. 1986). Because
 Ms. Limbrick “did not show good cause for filing an un-
 timely appeal, the argument that the agency would not be
 prejudiced by a waiver is irrelevant.” Id. We conclude that
 Ms. Limbrick has failed to establish that the Board abused
 its discretion.
                        CONCLUSION
     We have considered Ms. Limbrick’s remaining argu-
 ments and find them unpersuasive. For the reasons above,
 we affirm the Board’s dismissal of Ms. Limbrick’s petition
 as untimely filed without good cause.
                         AFFIRMED
                            COSTS
 No costs.