Court Opinion

ID: 9949726
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-03-12 15:01:30.400248+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:25:51.223424
License: Public Domain

Case: 23-2200    Document: 24     Page: 1   Filed: 03/12/2024

        NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.

   United States Court of Appeals
       for the Federal Circuit
                  ______________________

                RODNEY KEITH WRIGHT,
                   Claimant-Appellant

                             v.

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

                        2023-2200
                  ______________________

    Appeal from the United States Court of Appeals for
 Veterans Claims in No. 23-196, Judge Coral Wong Pietsch.
                 ______________________

                 Decided: March 12, 2024
                 ______________________

    RODNEY WRIGHT, Brooklyn, NY, pro se.

     NATALEE A. ALLENBAUGH, Commercial Litigation
 Branch, Civil Division, United States Department of Jus-
 tice, Washington, DC, for respondent-appellee. Also repre-
 sented by BRIAN M. BOYNTON, MARTIN F. HOCKEY, JR.,
 PATRICIA M. MCCARTHY; BRIAN D. GRIFFIN, Office of Gen-
 eral Counsel, United States Department of Veterans Af-
 fairs, Washington, DC.
                  ______________________
Case: 23-2200    Document: 24      Page: 2    Filed: 03/12/2024

 2                                     WRIGHT v. MCDONOUGH

     Before MOORE, Chief Judge, CLEVENGER and CHEN,
                     Circuit Judges.
 PER CURIAM.
     Mr. Rodney Keith Wright appeals an order of the
 United States Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims (Vet-
 erans Court) denying in part and dismissing in part
 Mr. Wright’s petition for extraordinary relief. Wright v.
 McDonough, No. 23-0196, 2023 WL 4175143, at *11 (Vet.
 App. June 26, 2023) (Order). We affirm the Veterans
 Court’s order denying the petition and dismiss the parts of
 Mr. Wright’s appeal over which we do not have jurisdiction.
                        BACKGROUND
    Mr. Wright served in the United States Army from
 June 1990 to October 1990 and in the United States Air
 Force from August 2001 to October 2001. Appx. at 15–16. 1
     On January 11, 2023, Mr. Wright filed with the Veter-
 ans Court a petition for a writ of mandamus. Order, 2023
 WL 4175143, at *1. As it pertains to this appeal, the peti-
 tion principally argued that the Department of Veterans
 Affairs (VA) committed clear and unmistakable error
 (CUE) in determining his eligibility for Special Monthly
 Compensation (SMC) benefits and alleged that the VA un-
 reasonably delayed acting on an alleged April 2019 CUE
 motion. Id. at *1, *6.
     The Veterans Court found that issuing a writ of man-
 damus was not appropriate, dismissing in part and deny-
 ing in part the petition. Id. at *11. It dismissed the matter
 of whether Mr. Wright was entitled to SMC benefits be-
 cause he failed to exhaust his administrative remedies, id.
 at *6–7, and it denied Mr. Wright’s request to compel VA

     1  “Appx.” refers to the appendix filed concurrently
 with Respondent’s brief.
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 WRIGHT v. MCDONOUGH                                          3

 action on his alleged April 2019 CUE motion because he
 failed to show unreasonable delay under the factors artic-
 ulated in Telecommunications Research and Action Center
 v. Federal Communications Commission, 750 F.2d 70 (D.C.
 Cir. 1984) (TRAC), id. at *9–11.
      Mr. Wright appeals the Veterans Court’s decision. He
 “is solely appealing the [Veterans Court’s] opinion regard-
 ing the [CUE] related to his [SMC] benefits as a matter of
 law and the Appellee’s unreasonable delay in processing
 [his] CUE claim.” Appellant’s Br. at 1.
                          DISCUSSION
     Our jurisdiction to review decisions of the Veterans
 Court is limited by statute. See 38 U.S.C. § 7292. We may
 review “the validity of a decision of the Court on a rule of
 law or of any statute or regulation . . . or any interpretation
 thereof . . . that was relied on by the Court in making the
 decision.” 38 U.S.C. § 7292(a). We have “jurisdiction to re-
 view the [Veterans Court’s] decision whether to grant a
 mandamus petition that raises a non-frivolous legal ques-
 tion.” Beasley v. Shinseki, 709 F.3d 1154, 1158 (Fed. Cir.
 2013). Although we “may not review the factual merits of
 the veteran’s claim,” “we may determine whether the peti-
 tioner has satisfied the legal standard for issuing the writ.”
 Id. We review the Veterans Court’s denial of a petition for
 a writ of mandamus for abuse of discretion. See Lamb v.
 Principi, 284 F.3d 1378, 1384 (Fed. Cir. 2002); Kerr v. U.S.
 Dist. Ct. for N. Dist. of Cal., 426 U.S. 394, 403 (1976).
      To obtain mandamus, the petitioner must show (1) that
 there are no adequate alternative legal channels through
 which the petitioner may obtain the requested relief,
 (2) that he has a clear and indisputable legal right to that
 relief, and (3) that the grant of mandamus relief is appro-
 priate under the circumstances. See Cheney v. U.S. Dist.
 Ct. for D.C., 542 U.S. 367, 380–81 (2004); Hargrove v.
 Shinseki, 629 F.3d 1377, 1378 (Fed. Cir. 2011).
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 4                                     WRIGHT v. MCDONOUGH

     For the SMC-benefits claim, the Veterans Court found
 the writ to be inappropriate because “Mr. Wright has not
 shown that he lacks alternative means to pursue relief.”
 Order, 2023 WL 4175143, at *2; see also id. at *7. The
 proper course of action, in the Veterans Court’s view, would
 be for Mr. Wright to appeal through the Regional Office as
 a “request for a writ is not a substitute for the claims and
 appeals process.” Id. at *6–7. Because Mr. Wright did not
 exhaust his administrative remedies, the Veterans Court
 did not abuse its discretion in dismissing the petition for a
 writ of mandamus. See Hargrove, 629 F.3d at 1378.
     Nor did the Veterans Court abuse its discretion in
 denying the petition based on its finding that Mr. Wright
 had not shown unreasonable delay on his alleged April
 2019 CUE motion. When analyzing petitions based on al-
 leged unreasonable delay by the VA, the Veterans Court is
 guided by the six TRAC factors:
     (1) the time agencies take to make decisions must
     be governed by a “rule of reason”;
     (2) where Congress has provided a timetable or
     other indication of the speed with which it expects
     the agency to proceed in the enabling statute, that
     statutory scheme may supply content for this rule
     of reason;
     (3) delays that might be reasonable in the sphere of
     economic regulation are less tolerable when human
     health and welfare are at stake;
     (4) the court should consider the effect of expedit-
     ing delayed action on agency activities of a higher
     or competing priority;
     (5) the court should also take into account the na-
     ture and extent of the interests prejudiced by delay;
     and
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 WRIGHT v. MCDONOUGH                                         5

     (6) the court need not find “any impropriety lurking
     behind agency lassitude” in order to hold that
     agency action is unreasonably delayed.
 Martin v. O’Rourke, 891 F.3d 1338, 1344–45, 1348 (Fed.
 Cir. 2018) (quoting TRAC, 750 F.2d at 79–80).
      Here, the Veterans Court concluded that Mr. Wright
 failed to show unreasonable delay under the TRAC factors
 because his only pending CUE motion was filed in January
 2023. Order, 2023 WL 4175143, at *10.
     Mr. Wright argues that the TRAC factors favor him.
 See Appellant’s Br. 22–29. The gist of his argument is that
 even though he did not file a CUE motion until January
 2023, he called one of the VA’s call centers as early as April
 2019 and thus alerted the VA of a CUE by that date. So
 according to Mr. Wright, April 2019 is the relevant starting
 point, and a five-year delay is unreasonable.
     The Veterans Court, however, found no record of a
 pending CUE claim prior to January 2023 and explained
 that VA regulations dictate how Mr. Wright should have
 proceeded in order to adjudicate a CUE motion that he be-
 lieved to be pending. Order, 2023 WL 4175143, at *6–7.
 Mr. Wright provides no legal authority for his argument
 that calling the VA amounts to the filing of a CUE motion.
 The Veterans Court therefore acted within its discretion in
 finding that January 2023 was the relevant date from
 which to measure the reasonableness of any delay and that
 there was not an unreasonable delay.
     Mr. Wright also raises various arguments character-
 ized as constitutional. However, an “appellant’s ‘character-
 ization of [a] question as constitutional in nature does not
 confer upon us jurisdiction that we otherwise lack.’” Flores
 v. Nicholson, 476 F.3d 1379, 1382 (Fed. Cir. 2007) (quoting
 Helfer v. West, 174 F.3d 1332, 1335 (Fed. Cir. 1999)).
 Mr. Wright’s allegedly constitutional arguments appear to
Case: 23-2200    Document: 24      Page: 6   Filed: 03/12/2024

 6                                    WRIGHT v. MCDONOUGH

 simply reargue the merits of his case, issues over which we
 do not have jurisdiction. See id.
                        CONCLUSION
     We have considered Mr. Wright’s remaining argu-
 ments and find them unpersuasive. We affirm the Veter-
 ans Court’s order as to the writ of mandamus and dismiss
 those issues over which we lack jurisdiction.
     AFFIRMED-IN-PART AND DISMISSED-IN-PART
                           COSTS
 No costs.