[00:00:00] Speaker 03:
20-1086, Anania versus Wilkie, Mr. Carpenter.

[00:00:06] Speaker 02:
Thank you, Your Honor.

[00:00:07] Speaker 02:
May it please the court, Kenneth Carpenter appearing on behalf of Roy Anania.

[00:00:12] Speaker 02:
An affidavit from an accredited representative in a proceeding before the VA of the mailing in this case of a substantive appeal is, as a matter of law, sufficient evidence to cause the common law mailbox rule to attach in a VA proceeding.

[00:00:28] Speaker 02:
Mr. Ananiya was entitled to the benefit of the presumption that his counsel had mailed his VA-9 timely to the VA unless the presumption of mailing had been rebutted by the VA, which did not occur in this case.

[00:00:44] Speaker 02:
The Veterans Court erred by determining that the evidence of mailing was insufficient to establish the presumption of receipt of Mr. Ananiya's VA-9 by the VA.

[00:00:55] Speaker 03:
Mr. Carver, I guess there's an alternative way of looking at this would be to say that the affidavit, your affidavit could be sufficient to establish the presumption, but that there could be a question of credibility, a threshold question of credibility about the affidavit as to whether it was sufficient.

[00:01:18] Speaker 03:
I mean, suppose, for example, that an affidavit had come five years,

[00:01:25] Speaker 03:
after the statement of the case or something like that and that there were other indicia in the affidavit that maybe it wasn't trustworthy.

[00:01:37] Speaker 03:
Surely the board and the court of appeals for veterans claims could make a determination that the affidavit wasn't credible and that that presumption wasn't invoked as a result.

[00:01:52] Speaker 03:
Would you agree with that?

[00:01:53] Speaker 02:
I would agree with that, Your Honor, although in this case, the board and the VA treated this as a presumption of regularity issue as opposed to a presumption of mailing issue.

[00:02:04] Speaker 02:
And the affidavit simply was not addressed until the most recent remand from the Veterans Court, which resulted in the adverse board decision that resulted in the decision that's on appeal today.

[00:02:19] Speaker 03:
So you're not contending that

[00:02:22] Speaker 03:
the submission of an affidavit of mailing isn't of itself sufficient to invoke the presumption that there would have to be some determination that the affidavit is credible.

[00:02:41] Speaker 02:
My reluctance, Your Honor, is that it seems to me that that's part of the VA's burden in rebutting the presumption.

[00:02:47] Speaker 02:
To me, the question is,

[00:02:49] Speaker 02:
whether or not the mailbox rule attaches when there is such a submission, which is what took place in this case when I discovered that the VA had not received the VA-9 that I had timely sent by regular mail to the VA.

[00:03:09] Speaker 02:
Now, one matter that may have for clarification about the impact of this case is that with the

[00:03:17] Speaker 02:
evolution of the electronic system of the VA and its conversion from paper to electronic processing.

[00:03:31] Speaker 02:
The VA-9s in the legacy appeal and any other pleadings are now capable of being directly uploaded

[00:03:42] Speaker 02:
to the VA by both a claimant individually and through his representative.

[00:03:49] Speaker 01:
Can I ask you this?

[00:03:50] Speaker 01:
If we separate what are perhaps a couple of different issues, would it be right that the threshold issue is whether the CAVC here following RIOS 2

[00:04:10] Speaker 01:
legally erred in saying that a declaration, because it is self-interested, cannot be legally sufficient.

[00:04:25] Speaker 02:
Well, Your Honor, I think actually the Veterans Court went further than that.

[00:04:29] Speaker 02:
I think the Veterans Court really focused on whether or not an affidavit from the attorney and by implication

[00:04:38] Speaker 02:
transforming the attorney to a party would be barred because of the rules set out by the 10th Circuit in Sorrentino that a party's self-serving testimony would be insufficient.

[00:04:56] Speaker 02:
So I think it's a somewhat more nuanced error that was made by the Veterans Court by assuming that because there was no case law,

[00:05:08] Speaker 02:
from either the Veterans Court or this court that spoke directly to the submission by an attorney that the Veterans Court chose to follow the rule set out in Sorrentino.

[00:05:22] Speaker 01:
Suppose we were to conclude that the Veterans Court was wrong either as to a attorney declared or even more broadly.

[00:05:37] Speaker 01:
as to the legal insufficiency of a declaration simply because it is self-serving and not independent proof.

[00:05:52] Speaker 01:
And suppose we were to remand.

[00:05:55] Speaker 01:
What issues would be open on remand?

[00:05:58] Speaker 01:
And in particular, as a procedural matter, would there be a

[00:06:03] Speaker 01:
opportunity for additional supplementary affidavit or anything like that that might address other topics such as any regular course of mailing practice in your office?

[00:06:27] Speaker 02:
I have several responses to that, Your Honor.

[00:06:29] Speaker 02:
The problem with a remand in this case is

[00:06:33] Speaker 02:
is that the rules under which the Veterans Court operates are limited to the record that was before the board.

[00:06:43] Speaker 02:
And the only record before the board was my affidavit that the VA-9 had been timely mailed to the VA in adequate time for the VA to have received it within the 60-day statutory period.

[00:06:59] Speaker 02:
The difficulty with a remand and not a reversal is that it suggests that there was some basis in law for the disposition by the Veterans Court.

[00:07:14] Speaker 02:
And I do not believe that there is any basis for the Veterans Court's disposition of Mr. Ananias' appeal

[00:07:24] Speaker 02:
uh... by denying him the benefit of the mailbox rule.

[00:07:28] Speaker 02:
There isn't a question.

[00:07:30] Speaker 02:
I'm sorry.

[00:07:32] Speaker 00:
That's okay.

[00:07:32] Speaker 00:
This is Judge Stoll.

[00:07:34] Speaker 00:
Um, I wanted to ask you, um, so I think what I understand you to be saying is you want us to say that as a matter of law, your declaration was sufficient.

[00:07:44] Speaker 00:
The concern I have is that if we look at different case law from different circuits on the mailbox rule, I think you are correct that

[00:07:53] Speaker 00:
you know, a declaration might sometimes be sufficient, but it really is a case-by-case determination.

[00:07:59] Speaker 00:
So how can we possibly reverse?

[00:08:02] Speaker 00:
Don't we have to vacate so the court below can make an assessment based on, you know, a case-by-case analysis as to whether your declaration was sufficient?

[00:08:12] Speaker 02:
Respectfully, Your Honor, I don't think so.

[00:08:14] Speaker 02:
The Veterans Court had two opportunities to deal with this and sent it back on remand

[00:08:20] Speaker 02:
for the board to address this under the mailbox rule.

[00:08:25] Speaker 02:
The board then addressed it and it was returned adversely to the court because the board found that that affidavit was not sufficient to attach the mailbox rule.

[00:08:40] Speaker 02:
It seems to me that the question of law here is the attachment of the rule to then shift the evidentiary burden

[00:08:49] Speaker 02:
from the appellant to the Department of Veterans Affairs.

[00:08:57] Speaker 02:
And in this statutory scheme and this type of adjudicatory system, the intent is to be non-adversarial.

[00:09:06] Speaker 02:
They had multiple opportunities to accept it, as did the Veterans Court, and both rejected it on bases that were not founded in any

[00:09:19] Speaker 02:
version of the law that I could locate, even though you correctly state, Judge Stoll, that there are cases that talk about the circumstances in which an affidavit might or might not be accepted as attaching.

[00:09:35] Speaker 02:
That was not what took place here.

[00:09:38] Speaker 03:
But, Mr. Carpenter, there are two issues here.

[00:09:40] Speaker 03:
One, was it mailed?

[00:09:42] Speaker 03:
And two, was it received?

[00:09:44] Speaker 03:
On the first issue, don't you bear the burden of establishing that it was mailed?

[00:09:49] Speaker 03:
And if you establish it as male, that invokes the presumption and then the VA has the burden to show that it wasn't received.

[00:09:58] Speaker 03:
Is that not an accurate statement of the law?

[00:10:00] Speaker 02:
I believe that is an accurate statement, Your Honor.

[00:10:02] Speaker 02:
And my point is that my affidavit did that and there is no evidence in the record to the contrary.

[00:10:10] Speaker 02:
And that was the evidence that was both before the board and before the Veterans Court.

[00:10:15] Speaker 02:
and they didn't correctly apply the law as it has been interpreted by the various courts about what constitutes attachment.

[00:10:30] Speaker 02:
I will reserve the balance of my time, Your Honor.

[00:10:35] Speaker 03:
Okay, if there are no further questions for Mr. Carpenter at the moment, I will hear from Ms.

[00:10:39] Speaker 03:
Bay.

[00:10:43] Speaker 04:
Thank you, Your Honor.

[00:10:45] Speaker 04:
May it please the court, we respectfully request that this court affirm the Veterans Court's decision and reject Mr. Anamia's argument that a simple statement from a party or party's representative should be per se enough for the presumption of receipt to attach under the mailbox rule, no matter how conclusory or no matter how many years after the fact the affidavit takes place.

[00:11:07] Speaker 04:
Here particularly, Mr. Carpenter's affidavit, I think it's interesting that Your Honor mentioned five years because

[00:11:14] Speaker 04:
Mr. Anania's attorney's affidavit was, in fact, dated nearly five years after the date on which it was supposedly mailed.

[00:11:24] Speaker 04:
And so, and moreover, the statement, the sum total of the statement, which the Veterans Court and the board did both note in their decisions, is a simple sentence that on January 18th, 2010,

[00:11:39] Speaker 04:
I mailed a substantive appeal to the regional office in Waco, Texas.

[00:11:43] Speaker 04:
Now, it appears that Mr. Anania is arguing that a statement by an attorney, no matter how late after the fact and no matter how devoid of detail, should be per se enough for the presumption of receipt to attach.

[00:11:57] Speaker 04:
But that does not accord with the Supreme Court's decision in Rosenthal, which says that the appellant must prove that

[00:12:05] Speaker 04:
that the letter was put in the mail, and this court's decision in Rios 2, which says that an appellant must provide evidence demonstrating that, in that case, an NOA was properly addressed, stamped, and mailed in adequate time.

[00:12:19] Speaker 03:
Now, I would just like to point the court... Wait a second.

[00:12:21] Speaker 03:
I just want to be clear about the facts.

[00:12:23] Speaker 03:
Mr. Carpenter's affidavit said that the letter was mailed more than two months before the due date, correct?

[00:12:32] Speaker 04:
Yeah.

[00:12:33] Speaker 04:
He states that it was mailed on January 18th, which would have been within the two-month period.

[00:12:39] Speaker 03:
But it was more than two months before the due date, right?

[00:12:44] Speaker 04:
I don't know if he specifically states more than two months, but I believe that... No, no, no, no, no.

[00:12:48] Speaker 03:
Well, that's what we know from the record, because we know what the due date was, which was sometime in March, right?

[00:12:56] Speaker 04:
Yes, Your Honor.

[00:12:58] Speaker 04:
His statement that it was January 18th would indicate that he's stating that it was mailed before the due date, yes.

[00:13:05] Speaker 03:
Considerably before the due date.

[00:13:07] Speaker 04:
Yes, Your Honor.

[00:13:09] Speaker 03:
And so if it was mailed on that day, you wouldn't contend that it wasn't mailed in sufficient time to get there before the due date, right?

[00:13:18] Speaker 04:
No, Your Honor, we're not contending that.

[00:13:20] Speaker 04:
And I don't believe that anywhere that the Board or Veterans Court contended that either.

[00:13:26] Speaker 03:
Okay.

[00:13:27] Speaker 03:
Why is there anything unusual about Mr. Carpenter not raising the fact that this was mailed well before the due date, before he did a couple of, I think it was a couple of years after the claim mailing?

[00:13:48] Speaker 03:
Because normally it wouldn't, he wouldn't have received a notification from the board

[00:13:56] Speaker 03:
immediately, it usually takes a couple of years, doesn't it?

[00:14:01] Speaker 04:
Your Honor, I don't believe that we are contending or that the Veterans Court or board was contending that it was unusual that he didn't follow up for a couple years.

[00:14:13] Speaker 04:
I think it was slightly over two and a half years after the purported mailing.

[00:14:17] Speaker 04:
I think we're stating that this affidavit that is made almost five years after the fact and that he raised it two and a half years after the fact shows that a per se rule that Mr. Anania is advocating for that no matter what a statement from a party's representative should be enough for the presumption of receipt to attach.

[00:14:38] Speaker 04:
I think we're more rebutting that by showing that

[00:14:41] Speaker 04:
Here we have almost five-year passage of time, and yet he's asking this court to not only hold that the Veterans Court erred, but to essentially hold that there should be a bright line rule and reverse the Veterans Court's determination entirely.

[00:14:56] Speaker 03:
Well, the Veterans Court is the one that established a bright line rule.

[00:15:00] Speaker 03:
They won't consider self-serving affidavits from a party or the party's lawyer, right?

[00:15:08] Speaker 03:
that the opinion does reflect such a bright line rule, correct?

[00:15:13] Speaker 04:
Well, Your Honor, that's one thing I did want to address.

[00:15:16] Speaker 03:
I think Your Honor asked... Wait, wait, what's the answer to my question?

[00:15:19] Speaker 03:
The Veterans Court did adopt a bright line rule that self-serving affidavits aren't sufficient, right?

[00:15:29] Speaker 04:
I think that the Veterans Court, to the extent it adopted a bright line rule at all, would have been solely the rule that

[00:15:35] Speaker 04:
a party's own self-serving testimony is not enough.

[00:15:38] Speaker 04:
That's the exact language that the Veterans Court used in Rios 2 and that the Veterans Court used here.

[00:15:43] Speaker 04:
But I don't believe that Rios 2 in Scythian and the Veterans Court's decision indicates that that means that an affidavit or declaration is never enough, which I believe Your Honor asked the appellant about.

[00:15:56] Speaker 04:
In fact, I think it's interesting to note that in the... Council?

[00:15:59] Speaker 00:
This is Judge Johnston.

[00:16:01] Speaker 00:
I want to test what you're saying because in Rios, too, it specifically says, and it's quoted, in fact, in the decision below here at page 5 of the appendix, where it says that proof of mailing or that presumption of receipt requires proof of mailing such as independent proof of a postmarketed receipt or evidence of mailing apart from a party's own self-serving testimony.

[00:16:24] Speaker 00:
Why doesn't that suggest that they viewed

[00:16:27] Speaker 00:
self-serving testimony is never being good enough?

[00:16:32] Speaker 04:
Well, Your Honor, I think that's where, and certainly the Veterans Court might have done a better job of elucidating this, but I think that's where it's important to note that Rios 2, which the Veterans Court decision below was found by at the time, does state that it requires evidence of mailing apart from a party's own self-serving testimony, but does not preclude testimony at all.

[00:16:56] Speaker 04:
Indeed,

[00:16:57] Speaker 04:
The Veterans Court specifically notes that there could be testimony of somebody witnessing the mailing or in the form of the evidence of a course of business, which would presumably be in the form of a testimony.

[00:17:09] Speaker 04:
And in fact, all the cases... Wait, wait.

[00:17:12] Speaker 03:
I'm not understanding your response to Judge Stoll's question or to mine.

[00:17:16] Speaker 03:
I mean, on Appendix 5, the Veterans Court says specifically

[00:17:21] Speaker 03:
In the light of the Fithian Court's comments explicitly addressing the usefulness of a self-serving affidavit in the context of the presumption of receipt, the court finds no legal error in the board's reliance on that case and its discussion of whether the presumption of receipt attached.

[00:17:39] Speaker 03:
It's saying you cannot meet your burden of showing mailing with a self-serving affidavit.

[00:17:47] Speaker 03:
You've got to have something more.

[00:17:48] Speaker 03:
Isn't that correct?

[00:17:51] Speaker 04:
Yes, it's correct that a self-serving testimony is not enough, but I don't think that, I think if you look at Rios 2, that doesn't mean that affidavits or testimony as a general rule are precluded, but only when they're completely self-serving, or we read that to mean essentially conclusory, because Rios 2 cites to several cases in which the various courts found that testimony in the form of affidavits was enough

[00:18:19] Speaker 04:
to show the presumption of receipt.

[00:18:21] Speaker 04:
In fact, Rios 2 itself, I think, is really notable because in Rios 2, there were actually two affidavits submitted from an employee of the party's representative.

[00:18:33] Speaker 04:
So, analogous to the situation here, I think.

[00:18:36] Speaker 03:
If what I understand you to be saying is this, that it would be a legal error to hold that an affidavit by a party is per se insufficient.

[00:18:49] Speaker 03:
Do you agree with that?

[00:18:51] Speaker 04:
I'm sorry, what, I think I, can you please repeat that?

[00:18:56] Speaker 03:
Do you agree with this proposition?

[00:18:58] Speaker 03:
It would be legal error to rule that a self-serving affidavit by a party is insufficient.

[00:19:11] Speaker 04:
I think that that depends on what is meant by the term self-serving.

[00:19:17] Speaker 04:
if we hold self-serving to mean simply conclusory or bare bones, then yes, if that statement does include detail of either the mailing itself or of routine business practices or circumstantial evidence which this court endorsed in Rio.

[00:19:32] Speaker 03:
Forget about business practices.

[00:19:35] Speaker 03:
An affidavit by a party or his or her lawyer saying, I mailed it on such and such a date, addressed to such and such a person,

[00:19:46] Speaker 03:
with sufficient postage, it would be legal error to reject that affidavit.

[00:19:53] Speaker 04:
I wouldn't say it's legal error to per se reject it or accept it as Mr. Carpenter asked.

[00:20:01] Speaker 04:
And I would note here that there is nothing in Mr. Carpenter's affidavit to show that it was posted or.

[00:20:07] Speaker 03:
I'm not understanding your answer.

[00:20:11] Speaker 03:
Please tell me yes or no.

[00:20:13] Speaker 03:
It is legal error to reject a self-serving affidavit stating that the party or lawyer mailed the document to the required address.

[00:20:31] Speaker 04:
I think, I don't think it's legal error to always reject a statement from

[00:20:39] Speaker 04:
of party or a party's representative stating that they mailed the appeal to a certain address.

[00:20:46] Speaker 04:
I think it depends on the affidavit that's at hand.

[00:20:50] Speaker 04:
And here the board clearly considered the fact of the specific affidavit at hand and noted that those, the fact of that specific affidavit, which were only one sentence long, were not sufficient according to Rios 2 and 5 for the presumption of receipt to attach.

[00:21:07] Speaker 01:
And now I understand... What more do you think would make such a declaration more than conclusory and therefore sufficient?

[00:21:18] Speaker 04:
Well, Your Honor, I think... I put postage on it?

[00:21:23] Speaker 04:
I think if you look to the examples that were addressed in Rios and Rios 2, just more detail regarding the

[00:21:33] Speaker 04:
Um, circumstances of either the mailing itself, such as the, um, affidavit in Rio where she described, um, that she followed their normal mailing procedures when mailing the NOA to the court and a copy to the VA, um, and that she, you know, saw the, or the cases cited in Rio to that.

[00:21:52] Speaker 01:
Can I, can I ask you this?

[00:21:54] Speaker 01:
I was struck by the following, um, a long standing aspect of the Supreme court rules.

[00:22:01] Speaker 01:
says that if the postmark is, I think, 29.2, that if the postmark is missing or not legible or the third-party commercial carrier doesn't provide the date of the document, the date the document was received by the carrier, the clerk will require the person who sent the document, so now we're talking about self-serving, to submit a notarized statement or declaration setting out in compliance with 28 USC 1746

[00:22:29] Speaker 01:
setting out the details of the filing and stating that the filing took place on a particular date within the permitted time.

[00:22:41] Speaker 01:
Why should I not read that to say the Supreme Court thinks that a self-serving declaration can indeed suffice where the details of the filing may need to be

[00:22:56] Speaker 01:
filled in, but really more than I put it in the mail addressed to the right place on this day?

[00:23:03] Speaker 04:
Well, Your Honor, I think a couple things.

[00:23:07] Speaker 04:
I think that, you know, the Supreme Court, what the Supreme Court found was more than what we have in this case.

[00:23:16] Speaker 04:
And again, Mr. Anania is essentially asking, and I can even quote from his brief, that basically a statement, no matter

[00:23:25] Speaker 04:
how long after or how conclusory, essentially, should be per se enough for the presumption of receipt.

[00:23:31] Speaker 04:
And we would submit that even if this court finds that the Veterans Court erred by putting forth a bright line rule, that it should not endorse Mr. Anania's view of the case, but rather should just remand to the Veterans Court to conduct a more specific case-based analysis about that particular affidavit.

[00:23:51] Speaker 04:
I think one thing in favor of that is in this court's actual Rios decision, it's Rios 1 decision, it states that Mr. Rios must provide essentially direct evidence demonstrating that his NOA was addressed stamped and mailed, but also states

[00:24:07] Speaker 04:
that in lieu of direct proof of mailing, Mr. Rios may also prove the fact of mailing through evidence of mailing custom or routine practice.

[00:24:15] Speaker 01:
Right, but all of that... Actually, let me just ask you this question.

[00:24:19] Speaker 01:
Supposing there's a remand, what opportunity is there for either a supplemental affidavit or other evidence?

[00:24:31] Speaker 04:
I think Mr. Carpenter might be correct that the Veterans Court has to decide on the board's record.

[00:24:41] Speaker 04:
And here we do have an affidavit.

[00:24:43] Speaker 04:
So the remand would be then for the Veterans Court to specifically, although we do think that the Veterans Court did specifically discuss the affidavit, the remand would be for the Veterans Court to specifically look at the affidavit that Mr. Carpenter submitted

[00:24:58] Speaker 04:
and determine based on the substance of that exact affidavit whether that was sufficient for the presumption to attach or whether something more was needed in that particular case.

[00:25:12] Speaker 01:
And without a requirement that the proof be quote unquote independent proof?

[00:25:21] Speaker 04:
I would say that it could be without independent proof unless

[00:25:26] Speaker 04:
depending on what is meant by independent proof.

[00:25:29] Speaker 04:
I think if your honor is stating that it could be just in the affidavit itself, then yes, I think theoretically all the proof could be within the affidavit itself, but that the Veterans Court is restricted to deciding on the facts of this specific affidavit.

[00:25:44] Speaker 04:
And just to conclude, since I know my time is almost up.

[00:25:49] Speaker 03:
That sounds like a fact finding, which is not supposed to be made by the Veterans Court, but by the board.

[00:25:56] Speaker 04:
Right, which is why we believe that the court should actually affirm the Veterans Court's decision because the board, the Veterans Court specifically noted that the board discussed application of the mailbox rule to the facts of this case and the board did just that.

[00:26:13] Speaker 03:
In fact, the Veterans Court... The board rejected the affidavit because it was self-serving, right?

[00:26:20] Speaker 04:
The board did reject the affidavit because it was self-serving, but it did

[00:26:24] Speaker 04:
construe the fact of that specific affidavit and specifically cited to the exact nature of the facts alleged in the affidavit and analogized it to the facts of the Veterans Court's binding on the Board.

[00:26:38] Speaker 04:
In the Scythian case in which the Veterans Court held in Scythian that the statements in the Veterans affidavit were not sufficient and the Board here analogized specifically to the

[00:26:52] Speaker 04:
facts of the Scythians case.

[00:26:54] Speaker 04:
So the board did make a fact-based determination based on the fact of Mr. Carpenter's affidavit, even though the board did also cite the decision in Rios, too, for the quote-unquote self-serving testimony aspect.

[00:27:13] Speaker 04:
If this court has any other questions, I'd be happy to answer them.

[00:27:16] Speaker 04:
Otherwise, thank you.

[00:27:20] Speaker 03:
All right.

[00:27:21] Speaker 03:
Thank you, Mr. Carpenter.

[00:27:22] Speaker 02:
May it please the court, I have nothing further unless there are questions from you.

[00:27:28] Speaker 01:
I do have a question, Mr. Carpenter.

[00:27:29] Speaker 01:
Yes, sir.

[00:27:30] Speaker 01:
The question came up about the length of time between the January 10, 2010 mailing and the November 2014 declaration.

[00:27:42] Speaker 01:
Can you illuminate whether there is something

[00:27:49] Speaker 01:
Something about the length of that time that is either unusual or somehow doesn't make the declaration more suspicious than it would be if it had been filed earlier.

[00:28:07] Speaker 02:
Yes, Your Honor.

[00:28:09] Speaker 02:
The length of time that it was taking for the VA to process

[00:28:18] Speaker 02:
matters at the time in which the VA-9 was filed was not remotely unusual and there would have been no reasonable expectation on either my client's part or my part as his advocate to assume that there was some unreasonable delay that had taken place that would have accounted for

[00:28:48] Speaker 02:
the lack of action on his substantive appeal.

[00:28:53] Speaker 02:
The reality here is that the government is asking that somehow Mr. Anania or his representative intuit the non-receipt.

[00:29:08] Speaker 02:
And that's really the problem here is that there was no way for my client or myself to know

[00:29:16] Speaker 02:
when the VA-9 had been received.

[00:29:21] Speaker 02:
Under the new system with remote access to the claims file, I am able to see within days, occasionally sometimes weeks, whether or not the document was or was not received.

[00:29:39] Speaker 02:
And given the length of time ahead of which the 60-day period for filing the VA-9,

[00:29:46] Speaker 02:
had left to run under those circumstances, I could simply have provided another VA-9 had I known that it had not been received, which I would be capable of knowing at the present time.

[00:30:02] Speaker 02:
And that's why I made mention of the fact that the advancements in the electronic filing process within the VA have hopefully eradicated this as a problem in the future.

[00:30:17] Speaker 03:
Okay.

[00:30:18] Speaker 03:
I hope I've answered your question.

[00:30:19] Speaker 01:
Yes, thank you.

[00:30:21] Speaker 03:
Anything further from my colleagues?

[00:30:25] Speaker 03:
Okay.

[00:30:25] Speaker 03:
Hearing nothing, case is submitted and we thank both councils.