Tag: System

Dolbin v. McDonough, No. 21-2890(DATED: August 26, 2021); Appeals Improvement and Modernization Act of 2017 (VAIMA); Under VAIMA, appeals in RAMP are docketed in the order that they are received on a dedicated docket. Pub. L. No. 115-55, § 4(b)(3)(B)(i)(II), 131 Stat. 1105, 1121; VAIMA makes clear that RAMP operates independently of the existing “legacy” appeals system. Pub. L. No. 115-55, § 4(b)(1), 131 Stat. at 1120 (“The Secretary of Veterans Affairs may, under subsection (a)(1), carry out a program to provide the option of an alternative appeals process”); The Act also clearly sets out a first-come, first-served docketing system for RAMP appeals; Section 4(b)(3)(B) requires the Board to “maintain fully developed appeals on a separate docket than standard appeals” and to “decide fully developed appeals in the order that the fully developed appeals are received on the fully developed appeal docket.” Id. § 4(b)(3)(B)(i)(I)-(II), 131 Stat. at 1121;
Single Judge Application; writ; The Board’s decision to remand this matter, in order to obtain additional, and impliedly negative evidence, is an exercise of “naked and arbitrary power.” See Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356, 366 (1886) (Matthews, J.); In Wolfe v. Wilkie, 32 Vet.App. 1 (2009), we issued a writ even though the petitioner had the ability to appeal the matter to the Court. The circumstances here are similar in that regard and equally as egregious. This is illustrative of systemic legal errors that can be corrected in the context of a petition. See Mathis v. Shulkin, 137 S. Ct. 1994, 1995 (2017)(Sotomayor, J., concurring) (noting the continuing “dialogue over whether the current system for adjudicating veterans disability claims can be squared with VA’s statutory obligations to assist veterans in the development of their disability claims.”); (Gorsuch, J., dissenting)(“Congress imposed on the VA an affirmative duty to assist—not impair—veterans seeking evidence for their disability claims.”). The conduct of VA here is certainly emblematic of a systemic, bureaucratic disorder, which we are uniquely ordained to deal with;
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