Gudinas v. McDonough, No. 21-2171 (Fed. Cir. 2022)
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Gudinas served in the Army, 1966-1968. In 2005, the VA determined that Gudinas suffered from service-connected PTSD and awarded him a 50 percent disability rating plus a 10 percent disability rating for service-connected tinnitus. In 2014, Gudinas filed an unsuccessful claim for service-connected sleep apnea. Gudinas timely filed a notice of disagreement. Gudinas sent a letter indicating that the claim was secondary to his service-connected PTSD, requested increased compensation for total disability based on individual unemployability (TDIU), and sought to increase his PTSD disability rating. The VA denied the TDIU claim but increased his PTSD disability rating to 100 percent, effective October 2015. Gudinas argued that 38 C.F.R. 3.156(b) entitled him to an effective date of May 2014, because his October 2015 submission constituted new and material evidence relating to his May 2014 claim.
The Board of Veterans’ Appeals rejected that argument, noting that Gudinas’s May 2014 claim did “not mention a psychiatric disability” (PTSD), and that the claim contained no reference to an increase in the PTSD rating. The Veterans Court and Federal Circuit affirmed. Even if Gudinas’s claim for sleep apnea were considered secondary to his PTSD claim, the two claims would not need to be treated as the same claim for purposes of determining their effective dates; the Board is not required to explicitly determine whether a submission constitutes “new and material evidence” where, as here, the conditions underlying the two claims have no apparent connection.
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