Court Opinion

ID: 9965845
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-05-03 16:00:55.772012+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:25:45.911404
License: Public Domain

Case: 22-2285    Document: 54           Page: 1       Filed: 05/03/2024

   United States Court of Appeals
       for the Federal Circuit
                  ______________________

                CHARLES J. LOVE, JR.,
                  Claimant-Appellant

                                  v.

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

                        2022-2285
                  ______________________

     Appeal from the United States Court of Appeals for
 Veterans Claims in No. 21-1323, Judge Amanda L. Mere-
 dith, Judge Joseph L. Falvey, Jr., Judge Scott Laurer.

           -------------------------------------------------

      BRIAN M. AUMILLER, TAMORA E. DIEZ,
               Claimants-Appellants

                  ROGER A. GEORGES,
                      Claimant

                                  v.

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

                            2022-2296
Case: 22-2285     Document: 54           Page: 2       Filed: 05/03/2024

 2                                                LOVE v. MCDONOUGH

                   ______________________

     Appeal from the United States Court of Appeals for
 Veterans Claims in No. 21-3565, Judge Amanda L. Mere-
 dith, Judge Joseph L. Falvey, Jr., Judge William S. Green-
 berg.

            -------------------------------------------------

                  JAMES R. LINDGREN,
                    Claimant-Appellant

                                   v.

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

                         2023-1135
                   ______________________

     Appeal from the United States Court of Appeals for
 Veterans Claims in No. 22-1154, Judge Coral Wong Pi-
 etsch.
                 ______________________

                    Decided: May 3, 2024
                   ______________________

    KRISTINA MCKENNA, Latham & Watkins LLP, Boston,
 MA, argued for claimants-appellants. Also represented by
 ROMAN MARTINEZ, Washington, DC; MELANIE L. BOSTWICK,
 Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP, Washington, DC;
 KENT A. EILER, JOHN D. NILES, Carpenter Chartered, To-
 peka, KS.

     EMMA EATON BOND, Commercial Litigation Branch,
 Civil Division, United States Department of Justice,
Case: 22-2285    Document: 54      Page: 3    Filed: 05/03/2024

 LOVE v. MCDONOUGH                                          3

 Washington, DC, argued for respondent-appellee. Also
 represented by BRIAN M. BOYNTON, MARTIN F. HOCKEY, JR.,
 PATRICIA M. MCCARTHY; BRIAN D. GRIFFIN, RICHARD
 STEPHEN HUBER, Office of General Counsel, United States
 Department of Veterans Affairs, Washington, DC.
                 ______________________

     Before DYK, SCHALL, and HUGHES, Circuit Judges.
 DYK, Circuit Judge.
      Four veterans in three separate cases appeal from
 judgments of the United States Court of Appeals for Veter-
 ans Claims (“Veterans Court”) dismissing the veterans’ pe-
 titions for writs of mandamus for lack of jurisdiction. We
 previously consolidated two cases, Love v. McDonough, No.
 22-2285, and Aumiller v. McDonough, No. 22-2296, and the
 Love 1 case and Lindgren v. McDonough, No. 23-1135, were
 argued together. Because there is an alternative remedy
 by appeal, we affirm.
                        BACKGROUND
     The underlying issue in these cases is whether a vet-
 eran whose rating is reduced is entitled to have the original
 rating continue pending final resolution of the validity of
 the reduction. The factual background for each of the two
 companion cases is as follows.
                    I. Love v. McDonough
     Charles Love served on active duty in the Army from
 January 1968 to March 1971. Mr. Love was evaluated at a
 100 percent disability rating for prostate cancer from 2005
 to 2007, at which point his rating was reduced to 20 per-
 cent. Most recently, Mr. Love was again evaluated at a 100
 percent disability rating for prostate cancer, effective May
 8, 2009. In September 2019, Mr. Love’s rating was reduced

     1   We refer to the three plaintiffs in the Love and Au-
 miller consolidated case (Love, Aumiller, and Diez) as Love.
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 4                                       LOVE v. MCDONOUGH

 to 20 percent, effective December 1, 2019. This reduction
 also discontinued his special monthly compensation
 (“SMC”) that he had been granted under 38 U.S.C.
 § 1114(s)(1). Mr. Love contends that his disability compen-
 sation has been reduced by nearly $400 each month since
 December 1, 2019. Mr. Love sought review of his reduction
 and, after the regional office upheld the reduction, he un-
 successfully appealed the decision to the Board of Veterans
 Appeals (“Board”) and then to the Veterans Court. His ap-
 peal of his rating reduction is currently before this court.
 Love v. McDonough, No. 23-1465.
     Brian Aumiller served on active duty in the Army at
 different times from 2002 to 2007. Mr. Aumiller was also
 entitled to SMC and had a total disability rating evaluation
 based on individual unemployability (“TDIU”) in addition
 to ratings for other service-connected disabilities. On No-
 vember 5, 2019, the Department of Veterans Affairs (“VA”)
 notified Mr. Aumiller that his TDIU rating would be dis-
 continued based on evidence of gainful employment. This
 discontinuance also affected his entitlement to SMC. He
 asserts that his disability compensation has been reduced
 by nearly $2,000 each month since May 1, 2020. Mr. Au-
 miller filed a Notice of Disagreement with the Board, and
 his appeal remains pending.
     Tamora Diez served in the Navy from August 1979 to
 August 1999. On June 1, 2020, the VA notified Ms. Diez
 that her evaluation for her service-connected scar would be
 reduced from 10 percent disabling to 0 percent. The reduc-
 tion would reduce her total service-connected disability
 evaluation from 80 percent to 70 percent, affecting her dis-
 ability compensation. She contends that her disability
 compensation has been reduced by over $200 per month
 since September 2020. Ms. Diez filed a Notice of Disagree-
 ment, challenging the rating reduction. Her appeal re-
 mains pending.
     None of these three appellants requested that the VA
 continue their benefits pending resolution of the question
 whether their benefits were properly reduced.
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 LOVE v. MCDONOUGH                                         5

      On March 2, 2021, Mr. Love petitioned the Veterans
 Court for a writ of mandamus to compel the VA to resume
 his payments in the pre-reduction amount, arguing that
 the VA could not lawfully decrease or discontinue his pay-
 ments until his appeals challenging the reduction were ex-
 hausted. At that point, according to Mr. Love, the VA could
 seek to recover the interim payments, and the veteran
 could argue for waiver of the overpayment by establishing
 “that recovery [of the overpayment] would be against eq-
 uity and good conscience.” 38 U.S.C. § 5302(a)(1). Mr. Love
 argued that the Secretary’s action, by decreasing or discon-
 tinuing the payments while his appeal was pending, was
 an unlawful withholding, and that mandamus is available
 for “compelling unlawfully withheld agency action.” Love,
 J.A. 42. The Veterans Court found that there was no “basis
 on which we could issue a writ under the [All Writs Act] in
 aid of our jurisdiction.” Love v. McDonough, 35 Vet. App.
 336, 353 (2022).
      On May 25, 2021, Mr. Aumiller and Ms. Diez filed a
 nearly identical petition. The Veterans Court stayed the
 proceedings for Mr. Aumiller and Ms. Diez pending the de-
 cision in Love v. McDonough, U.S. Vet. App. No. 21-1323.
 Following the Love decision, the Veterans Court dismissed
 Mr. Aumiller’s and Ms. Diez’s petition for lack of jurisdic-
 tion. All three claimants appealed to this court.
                 II. Lindgren v. McDonough
      James Lindgren served in the Army from 2009 to 2012.
 Mr. Lindgren had a service-connected disability rating of
 100 percent due to post-traumatic stress disorder (“PTSD”)
 with depressive disorder. He also was entitled to SMC. On
 April 16, 2021, the VA notified Mr. Lindgren that it
 planned to reduce his PTSD rating and discontinue his en-
 titlement to SMC effective September 1, 2021. He contends
 that his disability compensation has been withheld by
 more than $400 each month since October 1, 2021. His ap-
 peal before the Board remains pending.
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 6                                       LOVE v. MCDONOUGH

     Unlike the appellants in No. 22-2285, on November 15,
 2021, Mr. Lindgren submitted a demand to the VA to “im-
 mediately cease the unlawful withholding of disability
 compensation” or to “immediately issue a written, appeal-
 able decision regarding its determination to continue its
 withholding.” Lindgren, J.A. 104. After Mr. Lindgren did
 not receive a response to his request, he petitioned the Vet-
 erans Court in a Petition to Compel Unlawfully Withheld
 Agency Action on February 25, 2022, making the same re-
 quest as in the Love case.
     The Veterans Court stayed the proceedings in Lind-
 gren pending the disposition in Love. Following the order
 in Love, the Veterans Court dismissed in part “the petition
 requesting that the Court compel [the] VA to pay the peti-
 tioner at his pre-reduction rate of compensation until his
 appeal of the rating reduction is exhausted.” Lindgren v.
 McDonough, No. 22-1154, 2022 WL 5240564, at *2 (Vet.
 App. Oct. 6, 2022).
      The Veterans Court ordered the Secretary to respond
 to the portion of Mr. Lindgren’s petition “that asserted that
 [the] VA had not acted on his November 2021 request for
 an appealable decision about the implementation date of
 his rating reduction.” Id. at *1. The Secretary responded
 that the VA did not intend to act on his request until a de-
 cision regarding the merits of his rating reduction was ren-
 dered. The Secretary “thus asserted that the petitioner has
 not shown that [the] VA has refused to act on his request,
 but merely that it has not yet done so.” Id. at *2.
      The Veterans Court found that Mr. Lindgren may pur-
 sue alternative means for relief by arguing “before the [VA]
 that [it] should address his November 2021 request” but
 that “the petitioner did not ask the Court to compel [the]
 VA to respond to his November 2021 request.” Id. at *3.
 Because there was an alternative means for relief, the Vet-
 erans Court denied Mr. Lindgren’s petition. This appeal
 followed.
     We have jurisdiction pursuant to 38 U.S.C. § 7292(c).
Case: 22-2285    Document: 54      Page: 7    Filed: 05/03/2024

 LOVE v. MCDONOUGH                                          7

                         DISCUSSION
      Our jurisdiction to review decisions of the Veterans
 Court is limited by statute. We have jurisdiction to review
 decisions of the Veterans Court “with respect to the validity
 of a decision of the Court on a rule of law or 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.” 38 U.S.C. § 7292(a).
 We have “jurisdiction to review the [Veterans Court’s] de-
 cision whether to grant a mandamus petition that raises a
 non-frivolous legal question.” Beasley v. Shinseki, 709 F.3d
 1154, 1158 (Fed. Cir. 2013).
                               I
     The sole issue before us on appeal is whether manda-
 mus relief was available for the veterans under the All
 Writs Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1651(a). 2 In particular part, the Act
 authorizes that “all courts established by Act of Congress
 may issue all writs necessary or appropriate in aid of their
 respective jurisdictions.” 28 U.S.C. § 1651(a). Since the
 Veterans Court has jurisdiction to “compel action of the
 Secretary unlawfully withheld,” 38 U.S.C. § 7261(a)(2), ap-
 pellants contend that when “an agency acts incorrectly, the
 All Writs Act provides authority for the appellate court to
 issue relief.” Love, Appellant Opening Br. 37. The veter-
 ans sought a writ of mandamus at the Veterans Court to
 prohibit the reduction of benefits temporarily until a final
 decision is rendered.

     2   The Love petitions and Mr. Lindgren’s petition in-
 cluded two bases for jurisdiction, the All Writs Act, 28
 U.S.C. § 1651(a), and the Veterans Court jurisdictional
 statute, 38 U.S.C. § 7252(c). But both the Love appellants
 and Mr. Lindgren concede that only the first basis is rele-
 vant on appeal. Love, Appellant Opening Br. 12; Lindgren,
 Appellant Opening Br. 10.
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 8                                         LOVE v. MCDONOUGH

     “A writ of mandamus is an ‘extraordinary remedy.’”
 Hargrove v. Shinseki, 629 F.3d 1377, 1379 (Fed. Cir. 2011)
 (quoting Mukand Int’l, Ltd. v. United States, 502 F.3d
 1366, 1369 (Fed. Cir. 2007)). In order to obtain mandamus,
     (1) the petitioner must show a “clear and indisput-
     able” right to issuance of the writ under the rele-
     vant substantive law, (2) the petitioner must have
     “no other adequate means” to attain the desired re-
     lief, and (3) “even if the first two prerequisites have
     been met, the issuing court, in the exercise of its
     discretion, must be satisfied that the writ is appro-
     priate under the circumstances.”
 Wolfe v. McDonough, 28 F.4th 1348, 1354 (Fed. Cir. 2022)
 (quoting Cheney v. U. S. Dist. Ct. for D.C., 542 U.S. 367,
 380–81 (2004)). “[T]he party seeking issuance of the writ
 must have no other adequate means to attain the relief he
 desires—a condition designed to ensure that the writ will
 not be used as a substitute for the regular appeals process.”
 Hargrove, 629 F.3d at 1379 (quoting Cheney, 542 U.S. at
 380–81). Without expressing any views as to the merits of
 the underlying issue, we conclude that mandamus is not
 available because there is an adequate remedy by appeal
 that appellants have chosen not to invoke.
                               II
     In No. 22-2285, Mr. Love, Mr. Aumiller, and Ms. Diez
 made no claim to the VA or to the Board for entitlement to
 interim payments. Love, 35 Vet. App. at 348. In Mr. Lind-
 gren’s case, a request was made, but there was no effort to
 pursue the matter further when the agency failed to act.
 Lindgren, 2022 WL 5240564, at *1–2. The veterans urge
 that further action—i.e., an appeal of any denial of a re-
 quest for interim relief—was not possible because the
 Board in Lindgren refused to rule on the request for in-
 terim relief until it decided the merits of Mr. Lindgren’s
 rating reduction. Love, Appellant Reply Br. 25 (“[T]he Sec-
 retary blocked that path to appeal and forced the veteran
 to continue suffering . . . .”).
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 LOVE v. MCDONOUGH                                          9

     The appellants fail to recognize that the Board is not
 the last word. The very purpose of the statutory provisions
 providing for appeal to the Veterans Court, 38 U.S.C.
 § 7252(a), and to this court, 38 U.S.C. § 7292(c), is to cor-
 rect error by the VA. The veterans in the Love case could
 request relief from the VA. In both the Love and Lindgren
 cases, the failure of the VA to act or refuse to rule would
 support the petitions for mandamus to compel the agency
 to decide the case so that an appeal could be pursued. In-
 deed, we have routinely approved this approach in the vet-
 erans context, 3 and the Veterans Court in these cases
 advised the appellants of the availability of this very pro-
 cess. 4
     Here, despite appellants’ claims at oral argument, no
 request was made to compel a decision by the Board, even
 in Lindgren, as the Veterans Court determined. Lindgren,
 2022 WL 5240564, at *3 (“[T]he petitioner did not ask the
 Court to compel [the] VA to respond to his November 2021

     3   See Bates v. Nicholson, 398 F.3d 1355, 1357 (Fed.
 Cir. 2005) (reversing and remanding with instructions to
 issue the writ of mandamus to direct the Board to decide
 the matter so that petitioner could pursue his appeal); Cox
 v. West, 149 F.3d 1360, 1366 (Fed. Cir. 1998) (vacating and
 remanding for the Veterans Court to decide “whether to is-
 sue a writ of mandamus compelling the Secretary and the
 Board . . . to issue a final decision”); Martin v. O’Rourke,
 891 F.3d 1338, 1343 (Fed. Cir. 2018) (“Mandamus is thus
 an appropriate procedural vehicle to address claims of un-
 reasonable delay . . . .”).
      4  See Lindgren, 2022 WL 5240564, at *3 (“If the pe-
 titioner pursues alternative means to obtain the relief he
 seeks and [the] VA fails to respond within a reasonable
 time, he may return to the Court and file a new petition.”);
 Love, 35 Vet. App. at 348 (“Should Mr. Love seek a section
 511(a) decision that could be appealed to the Board and
 then this Court . . . his ability to obtain a decision of the
 Secretary would involve our prospective jurisdiction.”).
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 10                                        LOVE v. MCDONOUGH

 request.”); see also In re Tennant, 359 F.3d 523, 528 (D.C.
 Cir. 2004). If a decision had been obtained from the Board
 denying the requested relief, a remedy by appeal would
 have been available to the veterans.
                               III
      Any argument that the lack of a final judgment on the
 underlying disability claim would preclude an appeal from
 the denial of a request for interim relief would necessarily
 fail. Finality is assessed on a claim-by-claim basis, and the
 question of entitlement to interim payments as a discrete
 benefit is a separate legal claim from the merits of an un-
 derlying rating reduction. See Elkins v. Gober, 229 F.3d
 1369, 1374 (Fed. Cir. 2000) (“This court has consistently
 recognized that the various claims of a veteran’s overall
 ‘case’ may be treated as distinct for jurisdictional pur-
 poses.”). The same is true for appeals from the Board to
 the Veterans Court. Id. at 1375 (“Our decisions are con-
 sistent with the approach adopted by the Veterans Court
 in treating a veteran’s different claims as separately ap-
 pealable matters.”); see, e.g., Hamilton v. Brown, 4 Vet.
 App. 528, 544 (1993). A decision from the Board denying
 interim relief would be a final decision within the Veterans
 Court’s jurisdiction. Kirkpatrick v. Nicholson, 417 F.3d
 1361, 1364 (Fed. Cir. 2005) (“Our case law and section
 7104(d)(2) define a Board decision as including an order
 granting appropriate relief or denying relief.”). A decision
 by the Veterans Court denying relief would also be appeal-
 able. 38 U.S.C. § 7292(a).
     Even if the request for interim relief were not treated
 as a separate claim, review in this court would be available.
 Although we have “generally declined to review non-final
 orders of the Veterans Court,” there are exceptions in lim-
 ited and rare circumstances. Williams v. Principi, 275 F.3d
 1361, 1363 (Fed. Cir. 2002) (quoting Adams v. Principi, 256
 F.3d 1318, 1320 (Fed. Cir. 2001)). An appeal is available
      if three conditions are satisfied: (1) there must
      have been a clear and final decision of a legal issue
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 LOVE v. MCDONOUGH                                         11

     that (a) is separate from the remand proceedings,
     (b) will directly govern the remand proceedings or,
     (c) if reversed by this court, would render the re-
     mand proceedings unnecessary; (2) the resolution
     of the legal issues must adversely affect the party
     seeking review; and, (3) there must be a substan-
     tial risk that the decision would not survive a re-
     mand, i.e., that the remand proceeding may moot
     the issue.
 Williams, 275 F.3d at 1364 (footnotes omitted).
      If the veterans had appealed the question of their enti-
 tlement to interim payments while the merits of their re-
 ductions were still pending, their appeals would have
 fallen within this exception. The proper implementation
 date is a legal question separate from the proceedings, the
 resolution would adversely affect the veterans, and, as the
 veterans point out, “any relief issued once the decisions are
 final [would] be meaningless.” Love, Appellant Opening
 Br. 19. The conditions for a non-final appeal would have
 been satisfied. See, e.g., Adams, 256 F.3d at 1321.
      As the government concedes, if an appeal had been
 taken, relief under Rule 8(a) of the Court of Veterans Ap-
 peals Rules of Practice and Procedure was also potentially
 available pending appeal to stay the withholding of bene-
 fits while the merits of the veterans’ appeals were consid-
 ered. See Groves v. McDonough, 34 F.4th 1074, 1081 (Fed.
 Cir. 2022). Similar relief from this court would be poten-
 tially available under Rule 18 of the Federal Rules of Ap-
 pellate Procedure.
                              IV
     When, as here, there is a remedy by appeal, “[i]t is well
 established that mandamus is unavailable.” Wolfe, 28
 F.4th at 1357; see also Bankers Life & Cas. Co. v. Holland,
 346 U.S. 379, 384–85 (1953) (explaining that mandamus
 “should be resorted to only where appeal is a clearly inad-
 equate remedy” (citation omitted)). Here, much like in
 Wolfe, “[i]f [appellants] continued to follow the appeals
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 12                                      LOVE v. MCDONOUGH

 process prescribed in title 38, [they] would have received a
 Board decision appealable to the Veterans Court.” 28 F.4th
 at 1358.
     The remedy by appeal exception to mandamus applies
 even if a different type of mandamus order is itself neces-
 sary to create the appealable decision. See, e.g., In re Sha-
 ron Steel Corp., 918 F.2d 434, 438 (3d Cir. 1990) (denying
 a petition for mandamus when an adequate means to at-
 tain relief had been created by the issuance of mandamus
 on alternative grounds).
                        CONCLUSION
     Because there was an alternative remedy by appeal,
 the Veterans Court did not err in dismissing the petitions
 for writs of mandamus.
                        AFFIRMED
                            COSTS
 No costs.