I took a SWING!

[MyCorps]

Veterans,

Greetings. You will never know how helpful the information in this forum has been over the years. Your assistance and feedback helped me get rated @70% in 2015. Since then, I qualified for VRE and am about to finish a Masters degree. Truthfully, however, my employment situation has been a huge struggle with my earning beings around $9,000 per year. That is another story though. 

I need to throw something out here for feedback and thoughts (in general). I was looking through records with respect to past claims the VA denied (1995, 2007, 2008) prior to the 2015 approval. I separated from my beloved Marine Corps in 1994 and put a claim in several months later. One injury (knee) was denied along with the others. I grabbed copies of this particular injury during the SEPS process and still have them. I submitted them in 2015 and received a 10% rating. I read about CUE claims, case law, and VA Appeals on the subject however, this seems to be murky, situation specific, or rare to get approved.

I said what the heck and submitted the CUE Claim, with the aforementioned evicence (denial letter 1995, approval 2015, and oroginal medical records) and laid the case out in writing. The V.A. had access to my personnel records in 1995 when they denied but approved in 2015 with no new evidence. Here is what was different, I never received an exam in 1995, they just said no. I further read the V.A., back then anyway, had no "duty to assist" but today it is different or do I miusunderstand?

Is this a potential CUE claim? Either way, I took a swing!

 

[Lemuel]

The answer about medical opinions will come if CCK finds a neurologist to review my record.  One review was not considered in the remanded AMA BVA decision.  Hopefully it will be considered this time.  I stated I would pay for the review of an IMO.  They should have one they use.

Thanks, Bronco. Your help is always appreciated.  A lot of what I have done would not have been done without your help and a couple of times up to the CAVC before discovering two things.  1.  The BVA is the finder of facts and factual statements by the BVA are not in the jurisdiction of appeals courts, unless they are clearly arbitrary and capricious. (a higher bar than CUE) 2.  Appeals court clerks do not like to write briefs off pro se litigants filings.  They usually copy the filing of the VA GC no matter that it does not address the issues raised by the pro se Appellant.

The biggest discovery is that you have to state the facts demonstrated by the record and reference the specific pages and paragraphs in the record in your brief to the BVA if you want the BVA to address the facts as you see them.  Make the BVA clerk look up the "vague references" in the RO and DRO rejections.  Too often the RO and DRO decisions are copied from previous erroneous decisions and decisions without all of the evidence available.  This can go on for years.

If you draw a lazy clerk, and you have submitted appendixes to your brief with the copies of your references, why should the clerk look up anything that counters the medical specifics in your brief when the RO or DRO just copied a previous brief with vague references.  Make the clerk's job easy the way the VA GC tries to do at the CAVC.

Edited March 14 by Lemuel
left out definitive phrases

[Lemuel]

I did not say, above, above, that CCK is all over my SMC claim and my wife's SMC claim even though I thought hers would have been muted by her death only a few days after her claim.  But she should have had supervision for the year after her skull fracture and probably died because of not having the assistance we needed for her.  I was getting nursing services but she was not.  Only housekeepers that we hired ourselves.