Court Opinion

ID: 6887045
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-07-23 21:31:20.442644+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:05:44.474292
License: Public Domain

DENMAN, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
The appellant moves a modification of the opinion’s holding that the Veterans Administration had notice of the filing of a claim for compensation by the appellee. Appellant urges that it cannot be charged with such notice because of the administrative difficulty in examining its files in the compensation section to determine whether the applicant had correctly answered question 13(a).
There should be no such administrative difficulty if the files are properly kept. If they are not, such failure should not prejudice the veteran’s widow any more than it would prejudice a widow suing the Equitable Life Insurance Company with a vastly greater volume of life insurance and compensation business than that of the Veterans Administration. If properly indexed it would not take an hour’s search of the files to determine whether a compensation claim had been filed. One can imagine the short shrift we would give to a similar plea of the Equitable Life if the question had been whether the insured under a life policy had filed with that company a claim for compensation under an agreement with the company for compensation for total permanent disability.