Court Opinion

ID: 9493518
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:10:39.175168+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:55:53.356756
License: Public Domain

FRIEDMAN, Senior Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
In my view, the decision of the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims (Veterans Court) is not final, and this court has no jurisdiction to review it. I would therefore dismiss the appeal.
A. The Supreme Court consistently has held that a final decision is one that “ends the litigation on the merits and *1380leaves nothing for the court to do but execute the judgment.” Firestone Tire & Rubber Co. v. Risjord, 449 U.S. 368, 373, 101 S.Ct. 669, 66 L.Ed.2d 571 (1981) (quoting Coopers & Lybrand v. Livesay, 437 U.S. 463, 467, 98 S.Ct. 2454, 57 L.Ed.2d 351 (1978) (quoting Catlin v. United States, 324 U.S. 229, 233, 65 S.Ct. 631, 89 L.Ed. 911 (1945))). The Veterans Court decision in this case, which fully disposed of only two of the three issues before the court but vacated the decision of the Board of Veterans Appeals on the third issue and remanded to that entity for reconsideration, is a classic example of a decision that is non-final because it does not fully dispose of the entire case. Catlin v. United States, 324 U.S. 229, 233, 65 S.Ct. 631, 89 L.Ed. 911 (1945); Rexford v. Brunswick-Balke-Collender Co., 228 U.S. 339, 345-46, 33 S.Ct. 515, 57 L.Ed. 864 (1913); Cabot Corp. v. United States, 788 F.2d 1539, 1542-44 (Fed.Cir.1986). Cf. Rule 54(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which recognizes that a district court decision that “adjudicates fewer than all the claims or the rights and liabilities of fewer than all the parties” is not final.
The court so recognizes when it states that “[h]ad Elkins appealed a similar decision to us from a district court, there would be little question that we would lack jurisdiction.” The court concludes that because the Department of Veterans Affairs (Department) administratively treats separate claims by a veteran as in effect separate cases, there is “a fundamental difference in the structure of a single ‘case’ between veterans litigation and district court proceedings” that warrants the application of different standards of finality in the two kinds of cases. The court concludes:
we hold that the Veterans Court’s decision is unquestionably final with respect to Elkins’s neck argument and headache claim and that these matters are separable from Elkins’s back claim for purposes of this appeal. We conclude that we may exercise jurisdiction over El-kins’s neck argument and headache claim, notwithstanding the Veterans Court’s remand of Elkins’s back claim.
The practice of the Department to treat administratively each of a veteran’s claims as a separate “case” before it does not justify applying a different standard of finality in reviewing the decisions of the Veterans Court. The focus should be on how that court handles its cases, not on how the Department whose decisions it reviews does so. There is every reason to believe that that court treats a veteran’s different claims as components of a single case, not as separate cases. The present case, although involving three claims by the veteran, has a single docket number and the court disposed of it in a single opinion. Although the court’s decision was final with respect to two of the three claims in the case, that is not the standard governing whether the court’s decision is final for purposes of appeal.
Reviewing the Veterans Court decision in this case could produce the very kind of piecemeal appeals that the final judgment rule is designed to protect against. Cobbledick v. United States, 309 U.S. 323, 325, 60 S.Ct. 540, 84 L.Ed. 783 (1940). If El-kins were to lose on the remand, and if the Veterans Court were to uphold that ruling, Elkins then could appeal that decision to this court, and we would be required to consider this case a second time. On the other hand, if we were to dismiss the appeal for want of a final decision, we could finally dispose of the entire case in a single appeal after the remand proceedings were completed. The court apparently recognizes this consequence of its decision when it “acknowledge^] that allowing separate appeals of the various qlaims asserted by a veteran may lead to less efficient use of judicial resources.”
B. The remaining question on the jurisdictional issue is whether our appellate jurisdiction over decisions of the Veterans Court is limited to those that are final.
Unlike the statutory provisions defining the general jurisdiction of the other cir*1381cuits to review district court decisions (28 U.S.C. § 1291) and the provisions dealing with our jurisdiction over different kinds of cases (28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(1), (2), (3), (6), (9), (10)), which refer to review of “final” decisions, orders or determinations, the provisions governing our review of Veterans Court decisions do not contain that explicit limitation. Section 7292(a) of Title 38 provides: “After a decision of the United States Court of Veterans Appeals is entered in a case, any party to the case may obtain a review of the decision with respect to the validity of any statute or regulation ... or any interpretation thereof (other than a determination as to a factual matter) that was relied on by the Court in making the decision.” Although this provision does not expressly limit our review to “final” decisions of the Veterans Court, I view that limitation as implicit in the statutory scheme.
In view of the settled rule and practice that the jurisdiction of the courts of appeals is limited to reviewing “final decisions,” it is most unlikely that if Congress had not intended that limitation to apply to our review of decisions of the Veterans Court, it would not clearly have so stated. There is nothing in the legislative history of the statute that indicates Congress so intended, and the absence of any reference to “final decisions” in § 7292 is not enough to effect such a significant change in the scope of judicial review.
Moreover, in § 7292, Congress has provided for review of interlocutory decisions of the Veterans Court in certain circumstances. Section 7292(b)(1) states that when a judge or panel of the Veterans Court “in making an order not otherwise appealable under this section, determines that a controlling question of law is involved with respect to which there is a substantial ground for difference of opinion ... and that the ultimate termination of the case may be materially advanced by the immediate consideration of that question,” this court may permit an interlocutory appeal to be taken on that question upon a petition filed by “any party to the case.”
This provision is virtually identical to provisions authorizing interlocutory appeals to the courts of appeals from district courts in 28 U.S.C. § 1292(b) and to this court from the Court of International Trade and the Court of Federal Claims in § 1292(d)(1), (2). In these three statutory provisions, the appellate court’s general jurisdiction is explicitly limited to reviewing “final” decisions. The fact that Congress provided a similar provision to permit review of certain interlocutory decisions of the Veterans Court strongly suggests that it recognized and intended that our general jurisdiction to review decisions of that court also would be limited to review of “final” decisions. Indeed, if our jurisdiction is not so limited, there was no reason for that provision.
Finally, our jurisdiction to review Veterans Court decisions is limited in scope. We may review such decisions only “with respect to the validity of any statute or regulation ... or any interpretation thereof.” 38 U.S.C. § 7292(a), (c). We cannot review that court’s factual determinations or its application of statutes or regulations to the facts of a particular case. 38 U.S.C. § 7292(d)(2). In light of these express limitations, it is most unlikely that at the same time and sub silentio Congress intended to give us jurisdiction to review generally non-final decisions of that court.
The court may be ruling that because the statutes defining our jurisdiction do not explicitly provide for review of only final decisions, it has some flexibility in determining what decisions of the Veterans Court it will treat as final. There is such a suggestion in the court’s statement, made in the second paragraph of its discussion of jurisdiction and after quoting § 7292(a), that “[t]his jurisdictional provision leaves open the question of whether the Veterans Court must render a ‘final’ decision disposing of all of the claims or issues presented to it before we may exercise appellate jurisdiction.” If that is the *1382basis of the court’s jurisdictional ruling, I cannot agree. That concept of flexible finality is, for the reasons I have given, inconsistent with the statutory provisions governing our review of Veterans Court decisions.
The court relies on Grantham v. Brown, 114 F.3d 1156 (Fed.Cir.1997) to support its jurisdictional ruling. There the veteran asserted two claims: a left-eye disability and a pension claim. The Veterans Court dismissed the eye claim for lack of jurisdiction because the veteran allegedly had not filed a valid notice of appeal regarding that claim. It vacated the Board of Veterans Appeals decision on the pension claim and remanded that issue to the Board for reconsideration and readjudication.
We reversed the denial of the eye claim, holding that the Veterans Court had jurisdiction to entertain it, and dismissed the appeal of the remand of the pension claim, holding that “typically” we have no “jurisdiction over Court of Veterans Appeals remands.” Id. at 1159. The court did not discuss, or even refer to, the question whether in that circumstance it had jurisdiction to review the Veterans Court decision.
The fact that the court entertained the appeal even though the Veterans Court had decided only one of the two claims before it does not, in my view, make the case an appropriate precedent to support our jurisdiction here. When a court has not discussed or even referred to an issue, its decision cannot properly be treated as a ruling on the point. Compare Moore v. Mead’s Fine Bread Co., 348 U.S. 115, 118—120, 75 S.Ct. 148, 99 L.Ed. 145 (1954) (reinstating jury verdict for plaintiff in damage suit under § 3 of the Robinson-Patman Act, 15 U.S.C. § 13a), with Nashville Milk Co. v. Carnation Co., 355 U.S. 373, 376, n. 5, 78 S.Ct. 352, 2 L.Ed.2d 340 (1958) (stating, in holding that a private action would not lie for violation of that provision, “[t]he issue now before us was not decided in ... Moore v. Mead’s Fine Bread Co., 348 U.S. 115, 75 S.Ct. 148, 99 L.Ed. 145”). As in United States v. More, 7 U.S. (3 Cranch) 159, 172, 2 L.Ed. 397 (1805) (Marshall, C.J.), in Grantham apparently “[n]o question was made, in that [earlier] case, [United States v. Simms, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 252, 2 L.Ed. 98 (1803) ], as to the jurisdiction. It passed sub silentio, and the court does not consider itself bound by that case” (comment by Chief Justice Marshall during oral argument). In More the Court held that it did not have jurisdiction even though it previously had exercised jurisdiction in Simms in the same situation.
The court also relies upon decisions in which it has reviewed decisions of boards of contract appeals that decided some, but not all, of the claims before them, and upon decisions of the Veterans Court that reviewed decisions of the Department disposing of some, but not all, of a veteran’s administrative claims. Such reference is misplaced, however, because “to assimilate the relation of these administrative bodies and the courts to the relationship between lower and upper courts is to disregard the origin and purposes of the movement for administrative regulation and at the same time to disregard the traditional scope, however far reaching, of the judicial process.” Federal Communications Comm’n v. Pottsville Broad. Co., 309 U.S. 134, 144, 60 S.Ct. 437, 84 L.Ed. 656 (1940). It also overlooks the “historical differences in the relationship between administrative bodies and reviewing courts and that between lower and upper courts.” Scripps-Howard Radio, Inc. v. Federal Communications Comm’n, 316 U.S. 4, 10, 62 S.Ct. 875, 86 L.Ed. 1229 (1942). Judicial decisions that treat as final for review purposes administrative decisions that did not dispose of all the issues before the agency are not appropriate precedents for treating as final judicial decisions that decide only some of the issues before the court.