Court Opinion

ID: 9960511
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-04-16 15:01:29.217949+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:19:32.824311
License: Public Domain

Case: 23-1299   Document: 52     Page: 1   Filed: 04/16/2024

        NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.

   United States Court of Appeals
       for the Federal Circuit
                 ______________________

                 MICHAEL R. REGIS,
                  Claimant-Appellant

                            v.

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

                       2023-1299
                 ______________________

     Appeal from the United States Court of Appeals for
 Veterans Claims in No. 21-3469, Judge Amanda L. Mere-
 dith.
                 ______________________

                 Decided: April 16, 2024
                 ______________________

    MICHAEL R. REGIS, Sacramento, CA, pro se.

     DANIEL BERTONI, 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; EVAN SCOTT GRANT, Y. KEN LEE, Office of Gen-
 eral Counsel, United States Department of Veterans Af-
 fairs, Washington, DC.
Case: 23-1299     Document: 52      Page: 2    Filed: 04/16/2024

 2                                        REGIS v. MCDONOUGH

                   ______________________

     Before PROST, CHEN, and HUGHES, Circuit Judges.
 PER CURIAM.
     Michael R. Regis appeals from a decision of the Court
 of Appeals for Veterans Claims (“Veterans Court”) affirm-
 ing the Board of Veterans’ Appeals (“Board”) decision to
 rate his service-connected bilateral-foot disability covered
 by diagnostic code 5276 at 30% for the effective period prior
 to May 11, 2015. Because this appeal does not present is-
 sues within our limited jurisdiction, we dismiss.
                         BACKGROUND
      Mr. Regis served honorably from 1983 to 2003. J.A. 20.
 At issue here is the Veterans Court’s decision related to the
 following aspects of an April 19, 2021, Board decision:
 (1) the Board rated Mr. Regis’s bilateral-foot disability un-
 der diagnostic code 5276 (flatfoot) at 30% for the effective
 period prior to May 11, 2015; (2) it denied separate ratings
 under diagnostic code 5284 (foot injuries, other) for the flat-
 foot, plantar fasciitis, and Morton’s disease symptomology
 already rated under diagnostic code 5276; and (3) it in-
 structed Mr. Regis to file either a VA Form 10182 or VA
 Form 9 to indicate which track he intended his “argument
 for an earlier effective date for the award of a total disabil-
 ity rating due to [unemployability] (TDIU)” to proceed on,
 but it did not adjudicate that claim. J.A. 22–23. 1

     1   Other aspects of the Board’s decision were either
 unchallenged at the Veterans Court or remanded to the
 Board for further adjudication. For example, the issue of
 separate and initial ratings for other foot-related symp-
 tomologies (hypermobility and loss of use) was remanded
 to the Board. And the Board’s 50% rating under diagnostic
Case: 23-1299    Document: 52      Page: 3    Filed: 04/16/2024

 REGIS v. MCDONOUGH                                         3

     The Veterans Court concluded that Mr. Regis had not
 demonstrated error with respect to these aspects of the
 Board’s decision. Mr. Regis timely appealed. Our jurisdic-
 tion is assessed under 38 U.S.C. § 7292.
                         DISCUSSION
     We have limited jurisdiction to review Veterans Court
 decisions. Unless a constitutional issue is presented, we
 “may not review (A) a challenge to a factual determination,
 or (B) a challenge to a law or regulation as applied to the
 facts of a particular case.” 38 U.S.C. § 7292(d)(2). “Even
 when an argument is couched in terms of statutory inter-
 pretation, this court lacks jurisdiction where the review the
 appellant requests ultimately reduces to an application of
 the law to facts.” Delisle v. McDonald, 789 F.3d 1372, 1374
 (Fed. Cir. 2015) (cleaned up). Likewise, merely character-
 izing an argument as presenting a constitutional issue is
 insufficient to confer jurisdiction. Flores v. Nicholson, 476
 F.3d 1379, 1382 (Fed. Cir. 2007).
     The Veterans Court rejected Mr. Regis’s arguments re-
 lated to his rating under diagnostic code 5276 for flatfoot,
 plantar fasciitis, and Morton’s disease because they were
 either too difficult to discern or because he had not pointed
 out which symptoms he contended “were not compensated
 under Diagnostic Code 5276 or how any such symptoms
 could have satisfied the criteria for a separate rating under
 Diagnostic Code 5284.” J.A. 12–13. Ultimately, the Veter-
 ans Court “[could not] conclude that [Mr. Regis] ha[d] met
 his burden of demonstrating that the Board erred,” J.A. 12,
 when the Board determined that diagnostic code 5276 cov-
 ered these manifestations and that additional separate rat-
 ings would be duplicative.

 code 5276 for the period after May 11, 2015, was unchal-
 lenged. We need not outline other aspects of the Board’s
 decision in further detail here.
Case: 23-1299     Document: 52     Page: 4    Filed: 04/16/2024

 4                                        REGIS v. MCDONOUGH

     Here, Mr. Regis’s arguments related to his 30% rating
 under diagnostic code 5276 and lack of a separate rating
 under diagnostic code 5284 are all arguments about factual
 determinations or the Veterans Court’s application of law
 to fact. Specifically, his arguments amount to contentions
 that: (1) he should have received a 50% rating instead of a
 30% rating under diagnostic code 5276 for the period prior
 to May 11, 2015; and (2) the Board should have found that
 his manifestations of plantar fasciitis and Morton’s disease
 were sufficiently separate from his manifestations of flat-
 foot such that their separate and additional rating under
 diagnostic code 5284 would not have been duplicative.
 These are factual issues—or, at most, issues of application
 of law to fact. We recognize that Mr. Regis has couched
 these arguments in terms of regulatory interpretation and
 constitutional issues; however, that is insufficient to confer
 jurisdiction here. See Delisle, 789 F.3d at 1374; Flores, 476
 F.3d at 1382.
     We also dismiss Mr. Regis’s appeal as it pertains to the
 Veterans Court’s decision related to TDIU. Initially, we
 note that Mr. Regis appears to be under the impression
 that the Veterans Court somehow denied a TDIU claim
 that the Board dismissed. See Appellant’s Br. 30. That
 does not seem to be the case. The Board deferred assess-
 ment of the issue of an earlier TDIU effective date (which
 was raised in a correspondence that had “10182 11B” writ-
 ten on it) until Mr. Regis indicated which appeal track he
 intended to select by filing either VA Form 10182 or VA
 Form 9. This form-request aspect of the Board’s decision
 was not challenged or addressed at the Veterans Court. In-
 stead, Mr. Regis raised an unclear argument related to
 TDIU based on the state of the record evidence in 2010.
 The Veterans Court concluded that the argument raised
 was “vague and lacking in analysis,” was presented with-
 out “cit[ing] any evidence in the record,” and the Veterans
 Court declined to address it further. J.A. 16. Here,
 Mr. Regis’s arguments are also very difficult to parse.
Case: 23-1299    Document: 52      Page: 5   Filed: 04/16/2024

 REGIS v. MCDONOUGH                                        5

 However, they generally seem to challenge a determination
 the Veterans Court did not make on an issue it was not
 presented with, or otherwise challenge the Veterans
 Court’s conclusion that his argument there was underde-
 veloped.
                        CONCLUSION
     We have considered Mr. Regis’s remaining arguments
 and find them unpersuasive. Because Mr. Regis’s appeal
 does not present issues within our limited jurisdiction, we
 dismiss.
                       DISMISSED
                           COSTS
 No costs.