Veteran wins eight-year old claim with Grubaugh Law

On April 21, 2021, the VA found a veteran was service-connected for a post-hysterectomy with status post oophorectomy, endometriosis, dyspareunia, with an effective date of May 24, 2013. The disability rating was 50%. She received a check for $90,910.78 of backpay, and will receive approximately $905 a month for the foreseeable future.

When Grubaugh Law first received her case in 2019, her claim had been denied by the Board of Veterans and she was down to her last appeal. The Board had found there was no clear and unmistakable error (CUE) in a prior VA denial of her claim. Pursuant to Rule 33, we filed a memorandum at the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims arguing the Board should not have used the unforgiving CUE standard. Rather, the Board should have taken the veteran’s allegation of CUE as a notice of disagreement, and applied the more favorable presumptions veterans are entitled to.

The Secretary of the VA, through counsel, agreed with our filing and remanded the case back to the Board of Veterans Appeals. On remand, we wrote another brief arguing that VA failed to assist the veteran, and the veteran submitted new and material evidence relevant to her claim. Agreeing with our arguments, the Board remanded the claim to the Agency of Original Jurisdiction in February 2020, ordering a new medical examination.

The claim then bounced back and forth between the AOJ and the Board a few more times. After two medical examinations, VA finally agreed the veteran’s medical condition was service-connected. We at Grubaugh Law were ecstatic for this life-changing decision for the veteran!