[00:00:00] Speaker 01:
Our final case this morning is number 24-1576, Williams v. Collins, Mr. DeHaques.

[00:00:07] Speaker 01:
And just to alert you, one of the problems with these remote arguments is that if you're speaking and a judge is asking a question, sometimes it's difficult to hear that.

[00:00:18] Speaker 01:
So just be conscious that that's going to happen.

[00:00:22] Speaker 01:
Okay?

[00:00:22] Speaker 04:
Yeah, thank you, Your Honor.

[00:00:24] Speaker 04:
I sure will.

[00:00:25] Speaker 04:
Good morning, may it please the court, Kenny DeHawkis or Mr. Williams.

[00:00:29] Speaker 04:
I do want to take this opportunity to thank this court for the, to present his appeal.

[00:00:35] Speaker 04:
I want to start with the statutory and regulatory issues.

[00:00:38] Speaker 01:
75, 7105... Why don't you start by... I had a hard time figuring out from the briefs what's going on here is the idea that

[00:00:49] Speaker 01:
If he got an earlier TDIU rating based entirely on PTSD, he would have gotten special monthly compensation.

[00:01:01] Speaker 01:
Is that what we're talking about here?

[00:01:03] Speaker 04:
Yes, Your Honor.

[00:01:04] Speaker 04:
That's the main part of his argument.

[00:01:08] Speaker 01:
Okay.

[00:01:10] Speaker 01:
And even though the RRO didn't address that, you're saying that that, under the statutory scheme, was properly raised before the board anyway?

[00:01:24] Speaker 04:
Well, the dispute seems to center around primarily what the AOJ did when they adjudicated his claim for benefits.

[00:01:33] Speaker 04:
And when you look at the record in the veterans court's finding, it's clear

[00:01:38] Speaker 04:
And I think undisputed that the RO increased his PTSD rating and also found that he had a TBI service connected.

[00:01:47] Speaker 04:
Then when he challenged it to the higher level reviewer, the higher level reviewer made two very specific findings that are separate and distinct.

[00:01:55] Speaker 04:
One was that he could not get an earlier effective date for his TBI, and I'm looking on page 84.

[00:02:04] Speaker 04:
And it says the effective date of TBI is March 2018.

[00:02:08] Speaker 04:
There are no provisions that would allow us to grant an earlier effective date.

[00:02:11] Speaker 04:
In the very next paragraph, there are no provisions which would allow us to grant an increased evaluation for PTSD prior to March 2018.

[00:02:20] Speaker 04:
So the AOK, when they adjudicated his 2018 request for benefits, inferred or saw that there was an issue with the disability rating for his PTSD

[00:02:34] Speaker 04:
They increased it and also found that he had a TBI.

[00:02:39] Speaker 01:
And then Mr. Williams... Where's the reference to TDIU on this page?

[00:02:45] Speaker 04:
The TDIU, I don't believe is part of this specific decision.

[00:02:51] Speaker 01:
And it was... So he wasn't arguing before the RRO that he was entitled to an earlier effective date for TDIU based on PTSD.

[00:03:03] Speaker 04:
No, Your Honor.

[00:03:04] Speaker 04:
He was already, okay, I understand the confusion here.

[00:03:07] Speaker 04:
So years prior, he had already been granted a total rating, a TDIU rating based on all of his conditions.

[00:03:15] Speaker 01:
And the argument that he pressed a year after... Not under PTSD alone, right?

[00:03:22] Speaker 01:
Which is what you're talking about.

[00:03:23] Speaker 04:
Correct.

[00:03:24] Speaker 04:
And so because it was multiple conditions and disabilities, there was no SMC available.

[00:03:29] Speaker 04:
But when the VA increased his PTSD to 100,

[00:03:34] Speaker 04:
Then he looked at trying to get that effective date earlier, the total rating for his PTSD.

[00:03:40] Speaker 04:
And that's the specific issue that he was presenting to the HLR and then later to the board was the PTSD issue.

[00:03:49] Speaker 04:
And one of the components of that, his primary issue with that was that the effective date should have gone earlier.

[00:03:57] Speaker 01:
And I want to- I'm confused.

[00:03:58] Speaker 01:
Where do we find him raising

[00:04:01] Speaker 01:
The earlier effective date for TDIU placed entirely on PTSD.

[00:04:07] Speaker 01:
Where does he raise that before the RO?

[00:04:13] Speaker 04:
He wasn't specifically asking for a TDIU rating, Your Honor.

[00:04:17] Speaker 04:
What he did was the VA, the RO, increased his PTSD to 100.

[00:04:23] Speaker 04:
And he wanted that 100% rating, that total rating, to go back earlier.

[00:04:28] Speaker 02:
To 1999.

[00:04:31] Speaker 04:
That's what he presented, Your Honor.

[00:04:35] Speaker 04:
I want to emphasize here that the board did not address that, and neither did the court.

[00:04:41] Speaker 01:
The court just said... Isn't that a different issue?

[00:04:43] Speaker 01:
Isn't that a different issue?

[00:04:46] Speaker 01:
That's why it's so difficult to understand this.

[00:04:49] Speaker 01:
Yes, he was raising a retroactive issue as to the PTSD,

[00:04:55] Speaker 01:
My understanding is that he wasn't raising the assertion that he was entitled to an earlier TDIU rating based entirely on PTSD, which you say is the trigger for the SMC, right?

[00:05:12] Speaker 04:
A total rating is the trigger, Your Honor, whether it's a scheduler 100% under the rating schedule or a TDIU rating.

[00:05:22] Speaker 04:
But the general issue that he raised was

[00:05:25] Speaker 04:
My 100% should go back further.

[00:05:28] Speaker 04:
And the AOJ addressed that very specifically, again on page 84, that they cannot go any earlier.

[00:05:37] Speaker 04:
There's no provision which would allow us to grant an increase prior to 2018.

[00:05:41] Speaker 04:
And his notice of disagreement specifically.

[00:05:43] Speaker 01:
I'm sorry.

[00:05:44] Speaker 01:
You really lost me.

[00:05:45] Speaker 01:
I don't understand what you're saying.

[00:05:47] Speaker 01:
I thought that the legal issue before us was whether the term issue in these regulations means something new in the light of the new statutory scheme and whether it goes beyond the specific issue that was raised by the veteran to include other arguments relating to his disability rating.

[00:06:13] Speaker 01:
And now you're telling me that he did raise

[00:06:17] Speaker 01:
the TDIU issue earlier.

[00:06:21] Speaker 01:
I thought the assumption here was they didn't specifically raise the TDIU issue earlier, but that it should be viewed as encompassed within the claim.

[00:06:30] Speaker 04:
I see, Your Honor.

[00:06:31] Speaker 04:
So I think that the issue under the regulation, just to back up just a little, I want to emphasize, as we did in our briefing, that the term issue does not

[00:06:42] Speaker 04:
is not in the statute.

[00:06:44] Speaker 04:
The statute says a specific determination is what is needed in the Notice of Disagreement.

[00:06:50] Speaker 04:
And the VA, when they wrote the regulation, says that that specific determination means, with respect to compensation benefits, the issue which it further defined as the disability.

[00:07:02] Speaker 04:
So the issue that was presented, decided by the AOJ, and put in the Notice of Disagreement was PTSD.

[00:07:11] Speaker 04:
And the issue can encompass multiple different aspects to include higher ratings, TDIU.

[00:07:18] Speaker 01:
He never argued the TDIU issue, right?

[00:07:21] Speaker 01:
You're saying it's encompassed within the general argument about PTSD, but he didn't actually raise the TDIU issue specifically, right?

[00:07:32] Speaker 04:
He did not raise that specifically.

[00:07:35] Speaker 04:
No, Your Honor.

[00:07:37] Speaker 04:
And again, because of the way that the statute and the regulations are written, he doesn't have to if it's reasonably raised when the board is reviewing the PTSD issue.

[00:07:48] Speaker 04:
And so the issue includes, as we talked about in the Federal Register and some other sources, the issue includes the rating, the effective date, and a multitude of other, I hate to use the word sub-issues, but it really is

[00:08:03] Speaker 04:
of that issue, I think, is a better way of looking at it.

[00:08:06] Speaker 04:
And so when he got to court, his attorney looked at the record.

[00:08:10] Speaker 04:
Remember, he was pro se up until he came to court.

[00:08:13] Speaker 04:
And his attorney looked at the record.

[00:08:15] Speaker 04:
And talking with the veteran, understanding what his objectives were, he wanted that 100% to go back further.

[00:08:22] Speaker 04:
She looked at the record and said, well, here's a few ways that we can do it.

[00:08:26] Speaker 04:
And the court said, we're not going to consider that.

[00:08:29] Speaker 04:
because the board didn't have jurisdiction over the PTSD issue.

[00:08:33] Speaker 02:
Excuse me.

[00:08:36] Speaker 02:
What do you say was the legal error?

[00:08:40] Speaker 02:
I'm looking at page 21, because as you know, our jurisdiction is limited to addressing legal errors.

[00:08:47] Speaker 02:
And at the bottom of page 21, you say, the Veterans Court applied a legacy interpretation to section 7105 and 20.202, thereby limiting Mr. Williams' NNOD

[00:09:01] Speaker 02:
to the discreet argument from an earlier effective date for the total rating assigned by the AO in its 2018 decision, correct?

[00:09:10] Speaker 04:
Yes, Your Honor.

[00:09:11] Speaker 02:
So you're saying the board, the Veterans Court, erred with respect to the AMA, the new statute, correct?

[00:09:21] Speaker 04:
Yes, Your Honor.

[00:09:21] Speaker 02:
Is that your argument?

[00:09:23] Speaker 04:
That is our argument, Your Honor.

[00:09:25] Speaker 02:
But OK, but the problem I have is it looks like, though, before the Veterans Court, you abandoned any argument based on the new statutory scheme.

[00:09:37] Speaker 02:
If you look at appendix pages 198 through 201, you say, this is a legacy case.

[00:09:48] Speaker 02:
This isn't an AMA case.

[00:09:52] Speaker 02:
And the Veterans Court picked up on that at appendix 14.

[00:10:00] Speaker 02:
So I don't see where.

[00:10:02] Speaker 02:
And then you say in your reply brief, at the very start, there's a statement to the effect.

[00:10:13] Speaker 02:
Well, I can't find it.

[00:10:14] Speaker 02:
But anyway, you say that, so it looks like any AMA argument,

[00:10:20] Speaker 02:
was abandoned before the Veterans Court?

[00:10:25] Speaker 04:
No, Your Honor.

[00:10:26] Speaker 04:
The AMA controls the board's jurisdiction because the veteran had opted into the AMA and received a decision, notice of a decision, under the amended statute.

[00:10:37] Speaker 04:
And so once he received notice of that decision, per the public law, the rules underneath the AMA to include the amended 7105 and the amended 20.802

[00:10:50] Speaker 04:
tell the board what its jurisdiction is.

[00:10:52] Speaker 04:
And under the correct interpretation of those laws, and specifically 20.202 and 3.151C, the board has jurisdiction over the issue, so long as it's identified correctly in accordance with the regulation.

[00:11:10] Speaker 04:
And the issue is defined as, in this case, PTSD.

[00:11:15] Speaker 02:
Excuse me, but what about at Appendix 201,

[00:11:19] Speaker 02:
before the board, I'm sorry, before the Veterans Court says, thus, contrary to the secretary's argument, both the secretary's statement and the procedural history of this case is shown above, clearly established that Mr. Williams' TBI claim is a legacy claim and must be treated as such.

[00:11:37] Speaker 02:
He's for swearing or saying, no, I'm not under the AMA.

[00:11:42] Speaker 02:
And the Veterans Court refers to that.

[00:11:47] Speaker 02:
So how can you say it's an AMA case?

[00:11:50] Speaker 04:
Well, two responses to that, Your Honor.

[00:11:52] Speaker 04:
One is that this specific statement is talking about the TBI issue and not the PTSD.

[00:11:59] Speaker 04:
But more to the point is that this argument is addressing how the claim should have been interpreted when it was filed and looking at what was reasonably raised within that claim.

[00:12:16] Speaker 04:
and whether it was raised as part of an earlier claim stream.

[00:12:21] Speaker 04:
So the court would apply the legacy rules prior to 2019 to determine whether this would have been reasonably raised.

[00:12:30] Speaker 04:
And so I think the confusion here is that the legacy argument was directed towards interpreting the scope of the claim that was filed many years ago

[00:12:39] Speaker 04:
as opposed to the board's jurisdiction, which is controlled by the AMA statutes and regulations.

[00:12:45] Speaker 02:
One final question.

[00:12:46] Speaker 02:
At page one of your reply brief, you say, the secretary has asserted Mr. Williams waived the correct application of the law by asking the court to apply the wrong law.

[00:12:58] Speaker 02:
What are you getting at there?

[00:13:01] Speaker 04:
So as we cited to the Supreme Court decision in Moody,

[00:13:10] Speaker 04:
These statutes and regulations, the amended laws, control the board's jurisdiction.

[00:13:19] Speaker 04:
And the court, Veterans Court, cannot misapply the law to determine the board's jurisdiction or its own jurisdiction.

[00:13:26] Speaker 04:
Its jurisdiction is set by what Congress says and whether or not there was a

[00:13:34] Speaker 04:
Whether or not Mr. Williams or any appellant really argues for the incorrect application of the law, the court is still required, as is the board, to apply the laws as they are written.

[00:13:45] Speaker 02:
Are you saying that at some point, Mr. Williams, through counsel, and I realize it was different counsel before the court, asked the court to apply the wrong law?

[00:13:58] Speaker 04:
I don't believe so.

[00:13:59] Speaker 04:
That's what you seem to be saying.

[00:14:02] Speaker 04:
You seem to be saying.

[00:14:04] Speaker 04:
Sorry, Your Honor.

[00:14:05] Speaker 02:
No, I'm sorry.

[00:14:05] Speaker 02:
But you seem to be saying that below, he asks that the wrong law be applied, but we're not bound by that.

[00:14:14] Speaker 04:
My point is, Your Honor, one, I don't think that he did misargue the law or misstate the law.

[00:14:20] Speaker 04:
I think that he argued something else.

[00:14:23] Speaker 04:
And the court, when it was addressing that, and specifically, he was arguing that these earlier claims had raised

[00:14:30] Speaker 04:
certain issues or certain entitlements that the board should have looked at.

[00:14:35] Speaker 04:
And the court said, we don't even need to look at that because none of this was before the board and was outside of their jurisdiction.

[00:14:43] Speaker 04:
And that's where the legal interpretation came in.

[00:14:46] Speaker 04:
But Mr. Williams did not argue jurisdiction because it wasn't really something that was presented until the court issued this

[00:15:00] Speaker 04:
So I see I'm into my rebuttal time, so I will reserve what I have left.

[00:15:04] Speaker 01:
We'll give you two minutes.

[00:15:07] Speaker 01:
Ms.

[00:15:07] Speaker 01:
Jansen.

[00:15:26] Speaker 00:
Good morning, Your Honors, and may it please the Court.

[00:15:29] Speaker 00:
In 2018, the VA awarded service connection for Mr. Williams' TBI claim.

[00:15:34] Speaker 00:
And as part of that rating decision, the VA sought to delineate between his TBI symptoms and his PTSD symptoms.

[00:15:41] Speaker 00:
He had already been rated at 70% for PTSD.

[00:15:43] Speaker 00:
They were unable to delineate those symptoms as they overlapped so greatly, they had to evaluate both conditions together.

[00:15:50] Speaker 00:
Because PTSD provided him with a 100% scheduler rating, which was a full disability rating, and the TBI would only provide him with 70%, VA re-characterized his claim as PTSD with TBI residuals

[00:16:07] Speaker 00:
so that he could be afforded the greatest benefit.

[00:16:11] Speaker 00:
And since that rating decision was made in July of 2018, Mr. Williams has been using the appeal of that decision to reopen a 2001 RO decision where TBI was denied and his PTSD was increased to 70%.

[00:16:29] Speaker 00:
And I think we heard opposing counsel say exactly that.

[00:16:33] Speaker 00:
As soon as he got this 100% scheduler rating for PTSD,

[00:16:36] Speaker 00:
Mr. Williams has been trying to get that applied to him as early as possible.

[00:16:42] Speaker 00:
But the only way, as the board found and the Veterans Court acknowledged, that Mr. Williams could do that is to file a Q claim with respect to that 2001 decision.

[00:16:54] Speaker 00:
That decision is final.

[00:16:56] Speaker 00:
It was never appealed.

[00:16:57] Speaker 00:
There's no way to reopen it in the absence of a Q claim.

[00:17:00] Speaker 00:
And he doesn't bring a Q claim here.

[00:17:02] Speaker 00:
And so nothing that is before this court right now could have been before the board.

[00:17:08] Speaker 00:
It wasn't adjudicated at the Veterans Court.

[00:17:10] Speaker 00:
The Veterans Court explained how these claims for TDIU challenging the specific ratings of PTSD could not have been before the board because they were final in the 2001 rating.

[00:17:23] Speaker 00:
And for the same reasons, they are not before this court and cannot be adjudicated as such.

[00:17:32] Speaker 00:
Accordingly, there are no legal issues before this court that the court has jurisdiction to decide.

[00:17:38] Speaker 00:
On the AMA issue, we still have not heard how the AMA, and we have no authority to show how the AMA changes

[00:17:47] Speaker 00:
the scope of a notice of decision and the issues that can encompass, or the statutory authority at 7105.

[00:17:57] Speaker 00:
The AMA simply did this.

[00:17:59] Speaker 00:
It created multiple lanes of review for a veteran to pursue with respect to their various claims to compensation entitlement.

[00:18:10] Speaker 00:
It did nothing, substantively,

[00:18:13] Speaker 00:
to change the review of those claims or the scope of those claims?

[00:18:16] Speaker 02:
Ms.

[00:18:16] Speaker 02:
Jansen, let me ask you.

[00:18:19] Speaker 02:
I was focusing on in the discussion with Mr. Williams' counsel the fact that it appeared to me that before the Veterans Court, he'd abandoned AMA arguments, all those provisions.

[00:18:34] Speaker 02:
And then the Veterans, he says, it's a legacy case.

[00:18:38] Speaker 02:
And then the Veterans Court notes that, I think.

[00:18:42] Speaker 02:
Am I missing something there?

[00:18:44] Speaker 00:
No, Your Honor.

[00:18:45] Speaker 00:
The AMA was not raised with the Veterans Court.

[00:18:49] Speaker 00:
Same reason it cannot be adjudicated here.

[00:18:52] Speaker 00:
But if the court is concerned, there is also no reason to think that the AMA changed anything about the regs, the promulgating regs, or the statute that would alter Mr. Williams' claim here or his entitlement to compensation.

[00:19:07] Speaker 02:
Do you have any ideas to what he's talking about at page one of his reply brief that we address where he says, the secretary is asserting Mr. Williams waived the correct application of the law by asking the court to apply the wrong law.

[00:19:25] Speaker 02:
Do you have a sense of what that's getting at?

[00:19:31] Speaker 00:
I'll admit I'm a little confused by that characterization.

[00:19:40] Speaker 02:
I was trying to understand that.

[00:19:43] Speaker 00:
I think that is either maybe a reference to defining the scope of his NOD such that by raising this earlier effective date issue, he also could be heard to have raised everything related to PTSD.

[00:20:00] Speaker 00:
And the Veterans Court did not engage with that on that issue.

[00:20:06] Speaker 00:
Beyond that, I don't.

[00:20:08] Speaker 00:
I admit I don't know.

[00:20:09] Speaker 03:
Thank you.

[00:20:10] Speaker 03:
Not directly responsive to that question, but I had understood Mr. Williams wants us to reach what he contends is a legal question.

[00:20:18] Speaker 03:
And I think at page 32 of your rubric you're conceding that there is this legal question in the case, but I want to make sure I'm following correctly.

[00:20:26] Speaker 03:
He says we should determine as a matter of law

[00:20:31] Speaker 03:
whether the Veterans Court here applied a misinterpretation of the statute 7105 and the regulation 20.202 when it determined that the board did not have jurisdiction over the PTSD issue, that they misinterpreted the statute and the regulation to find that the board lacked jurisdiction and therefore the Veterans Court lacked jurisdiction.

[00:20:54] Speaker 03:
Is that a question of law?

[00:20:55] Speaker 03:
Is it presented to us?

[00:20:57] Speaker 03:
And if so, shouldn't we answer it?

[00:21:00] Speaker 03:
Or must we?

[00:21:01] Speaker 00:
I don't think it's presented to this court because I don't believe the Veterans Court did not rely on 7105 or the reg at 20.202 in its decision.

[00:21:14] Speaker 00:
Veterans Court did not see this as a legal issue of whether or not there was an NOD and whether or not it fairly encompassed the issues he was raising.

[00:21:26] Speaker 00:
So I don't believe that is a legal issue that was before the Veterans Court, and so it's not before this Court.

[00:21:30] Speaker 03:
You're saying, I guess, that it's just a fact question about what the NOD itself said?

[00:21:35] Speaker 00:
I think most generously read, the Veterans Court did construe one of his arguments on Appendix Page 15 to 16 as raising an issue of the propriety of his claims

[00:21:56] Speaker 00:
and whether or not those were before the board, and looking at the NOD to do that.

[00:22:01] Speaker 00:
And it did not raise, the Veterans Court held that that NOD did not raise the propriety of those ratings.

[00:22:08] Speaker 00:
And so it could not have been before the board or before this court.

[00:22:11] Speaker 00:
But it also explained that there's no way those issues could have been before the board regardless, because those were decided in an earlier final decision, which

[00:22:22] Speaker 00:
Again, it has not been reopened and there's no Q plan covering that decision.

[00:22:28] Speaker 03:
One other question for me.

[00:22:30] Speaker 03:
At 91 and 92, in the appendix, it appears that Mr. Williams did say something to the board about what he wanted in terms of PTSD.

[00:22:46] Speaker 03:
That is that he wanted the 100% rating and arguably he was challenging the rating 100 versus 70% as opposed to just challenging the effective date.

[00:23:01] Speaker 03:
Can you help me?

[00:23:02] Speaker 03:
Is that in fact what the veteran is saying to the board and isn't that enough to raise the issue?

[00:23:09] Speaker 00:
I believe that's part of his April 2019 NOD, so this was also in conjunction with the 2018 claim.

[00:23:22] Speaker 00:
I believe, again, perhaps that is also confusing, I guess, a little bit of what the VA did here.

[00:23:29] Speaker 00:
They did, in fact, increase his rating, but they did it by recharacterizing his claim.

[00:23:34] Speaker 00:
So it's confusing because the claim that he filed was only for TBI service connection.

[00:23:39] Speaker 00:
They granted that.

[00:23:40] Speaker 00:
And then in granting that, they increased his PTSD rating in such a way that would allow him the maximum recovery.

[00:23:50] Speaker 00:
He got all of that as part of his claim.

[00:23:53] Speaker 00:
He got an increased PTSD rating.

[00:23:55] Speaker 00:
He also got his TBI.

[00:23:57] Speaker 00:
And then he was granted SMC.

[00:23:59] Speaker 00:
So I'm not sure what else he could have raised here.

[00:24:02] Speaker 00:
I'm not sure what else he could be asking for because he got the relief that it seems like he's requesting.

[00:24:09] Speaker 00:
I think at bottom what, as I started this with, what Mr. Williams is seeking

[00:24:17] Speaker 00:
is to reopen his 2001 claim using the results of this 2018 claim so he can backdate this scheduler rating, SMC, and TDIU all the way back to 1999.

[00:24:31] Speaker 00:
But he can't do that in the absence of a QClaim, and we don't have that here.

[00:24:34] Speaker 01:
If I understand you, you're raising three objections to Mr. Dohacquez's claim.

[00:24:39] Speaker 01:
One, the issue that he's raising now wasn't raised before the Veterans Court.

[00:24:44] Speaker 01:
Two, he's trying to reopen a 2001 decision, which was final.

[00:24:49] Speaker 01:
And third, even if that weren't final, the statute doesn't say that you can bring up some issue which wasn't raised in the first instance before the RO.

[00:25:03] Speaker 00:
That's correct.

[00:25:05] Speaker 01:
Okay.

[00:25:06] Speaker 00:
So if there are no further questions, we would respectfully ask the support to dismiss the opinion.

[00:25:10] Speaker 00:
Thank you.

[00:25:14] Speaker 01:
Okay.

[00:25:15] Speaker 01:
Mr. DeHakos has two minutes.

[00:25:28] Speaker 04:
Thank you, Your Honor.

[00:25:29] Speaker 04:
So I want to emphasize we are not asking the board or anybody to go back and reopen anything.

[00:25:35] Speaker 04:
Had there been an earlier pending claim, then when the VA adjudicated as PTSD and increased it, it would have been adjudicating that prior claim.

[00:25:43] Speaker 04:
We don't know if the earlier claims are final because the board never made those findings.

[00:25:49] Speaker 04:
It refused to address the PTSD issue, and that's the primary dispute that Mr. Williams presents here.

[00:25:57] Speaker 04:
With respect to the legacy TBI issue that your honor was talking about on page towards the end of the appendix,

[00:26:05] Speaker 04:
If you look on page 86 to 87 of the appendix, you can see that the veteran was arguing that the TBI claim was still in legacy, and that's why there was a discussion about legacy versus the AMA.

[00:26:18] Speaker 04:
And I think that the veteran's court may have gotten confused there, but that was specifically the TBI.

[00:26:24] Speaker 01:
What language in the statute or the regulation was changed which suggests to you that the definition of issue was broadened?

[00:26:37] Speaker 04:
So the statute, Your Honor, was amended and heavily amended and specifically talks about the notice of disagreement has to identify the specific determination.

[00:26:49] Speaker 04:
Then the VA interpreted that phrase to mean that they have to list the date of the decision and which issue, which again is defined under 3151C.

[00:26:59] Speaker 01:
So you're saying determination is broader than issue?

[00:27:03] Speaker 01:
Is that what you're saying?

[00:27:04] Speaker 04:
Absolutely, Your Honor.

[00:27:05] Speaker 04:
And it's specific to the issue as defined by the regulation, whereas in legacy, as we talked about in our opening brief, was very specific to whatever determinations, I'm sorry, specific errors of law that the veteran wanted to bring to the court.

[00:27:23] Speaker 04:
And just one last point in my final seconds, 3.151C1, a single decision may adjudicate multiple issues

[00:27:31] Speaker 04:
whether expressly raised or recently within the scope of the application.

[00:27:37] Speaker 04:
That's where this comes in.

[00:27:38] Speaker 04:
When they adjudicated the 2018 request for benefits, they interpreted it to raise an increase for the PTSD.

[00:27:45] Speaker 04:
That issue was presented all the way through the board.

[00:27:48] Speaker 04:
We would ask that this court reverse the Veterans Court's determination and order it to address the PTSD issue.

[00:27:55] Speaker 01:
OK.

[00:27:55] Speaker 01:
Thank you.

[00:27:56] Speaker 01:
Thank both counsel.

[00:27:57] Speaker 01:
The case is submitted.