The U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issue dozens of precedential decisions each year that affect tens of thousands of veterans and their survivors who have claims before VA regional offices and the Board of Veterans’ Appeals. Without an understanding of recent caselaw, you will be less effective in developing strategies and arguments to help veterans and their survivors win their claims. These court decisions could provide new avenues for you to help veterans or their survivors establish entitlement to VA benefits, but might also invalidate arguments you’ve made in claims that are awaiting a decision by the VA.

This webinar will highlight the most important changes in veterans law that have arisen from court decisions issued from April 2023 through October 2023, with a focus on how advocates can use these developments to the advantage of the veterans they represent. By the end of this webinar, you should understand:

• Whether a veteran can receive a retroactive effective date for VA benefits for an herbicide-related disability under the Blue Water Navy Vietnam Veterans Act of 2019, if the claim was previously denied in part due to lack of evidence of a current disability
• Whether a disability rated by analogy must meet all the criteria of the diagnostic code under which it is rated to be awarded the associated rating percentage
• Whether pain on motion and pain at rest are different manifestations of disability for purposes of assigning separate knee evaluations
• Whether a VA Form 10182 (Notice of Disagreement) faxed to the Board is “received” on the date it was faxed or the date it was uploaded and acknowledged by VA
• Whether 38 C.F.R. § 4.59 requires VA to grant at least a 10 percent rating for any service-connected joint condition associated with pain
• Whether, in determining if a claim of clear and unmistakable error (CUE) was pled with specificity, VA has a duty to sympathetically read a veteran’s pro se CUE motion; and whether CUE must be based on an error already identified as erroneous by a court decision or VA publication
• Whether a veteran parent can receive a dependent allowance for a child who previously received Dependents’ Educational Assistance
• Whether a rating decision that simply implements a BVA decision can be appealed back to the BVA (update!)
• And court holdings on other important issues!