[00:00:00] Speaker 02: Is 2 0 1 7 dash 2 1 2 0 Jones versus Wilkie. [00:00:07] Speaker 02: Miss Gentile. [00:00:10] Speaker 02: Gentile. [00:00:10] Speaker 02: Gentile. [00:00:11] Speaker 02: How am I? [00:00:11] Speaker 02: Gentile. [00:00:12] Speaker 02: Please proceed. [00:00:20] Speaker 03: Good morning. [00:00:21] Speaker 03: May it please the court. [00:00:22] Speaker 03: VA violated its duty to assist by failing to obtain its own records. [00:00:26] Speaker 03: When the Veterans Court affirmed the board's decision, it made two fatal errors of law. [00:00:30] Speaker 03: First, the Veterans Court held that an informal claim cannot be initiated at VHA when this finding has no basis in law. [00:00:35] Speaker 04: And second, the Veterans Court unlawfully found that the unobtained... The government has requested to remand already, correct? [00:00:42] Speaker 03: Yes, Your Honor. [00:00:43] Speaker 04: And you're opposed to that? [00:00:44] Speaker 03: Yes, Your Honor. [00:00:45] Speaker 03: We tried to work out a few different remand scenarios, but unfortunately we were not able to come to an agreement. [00:00:49] Speaker 04: What's the sticking point there? [00:00:52] Speaker 03: The sticking point was that none of the remand or voluntary termination agreements would have involved vacating the lower court's decision. [00:00:59] Speaker 03: And the lower court's decision would have, because of the veterans' courts holding that informal claims cannot be initiated at VHA, the contents of the unobtained records wouldn't have mattered because that would have been a bar to any of those records being considered an informal claim. [00:01:16] Speaker 03: So, Your Honor, the second fatal error of law that the veterans' court made was that it unlawfully found that the unobtained VA treatment records are not relevant when this court has held that they are as a matter of law. [00:01:29] Speaker 03: We urge the court to vacate and remand this appeal so that VA can adjudicate Mr. Jones' appeal in accordance with the law. [00:01:34] Speaker 03: In doing, we urge that the court hold that first VA treatment records are relevant and the duty to assist by retrieving those records applies in this case because a claim may be initiated at the Veterans Health Administration. [00:01:46] Speaker 01: Do we need to resolve the question of where in the VA an informal claim must be filed? [00:01:53] Speaker 01: No, Your Honor, because... I suppose we could just say that [00:01:57] Speaker 01: You know, first of all, everybody agrees that this case should be sent back. [00:02:01] Speaker 01: And number two, perhaps under our law and the applicable regulations, the duty to assist was not fulfilled here because all medical records needed to be produced and considered and evaluated before, you know, considering whether there was an informal claim. [00:02:21] Speaker 01: And then that would be it. [00:02:24] Speaker 03: That would be it, Your Honor, as long as the remand allowed for the understanding that informal claims or formal claims may be initiated at VHA, and the date of receipt at VHA would serve as the effective date for that claim. [00:02:41] Speaker 03: And the Secretary actually correctly noted in his brief at the Court that if a formal claim were received at VHA, that the date of receipt at VHA would serve as the effective date for the purposes of [00:02:51] Speaker 03: effective date. [00:02:52] Speaker 01: Where in their brief did they say that? [00:02:54] Speaker 03: That was at page 34, Your Honor. [00:02:57] Speaker 03: That was in discussion with a formal claim. [00:02:59] Speaker 03: So if VA has already conceded that a formal claim received at VHA will be considered received at VHA at the time of receipt at VHA, there's no reason why an informal claim should have an additional barrier. [00:03:10] Speaker 03: And that accords with VA's regulations already. [00:03:12] Speaker 03: 38 CFR 3.1 R notes that the date of receipt [00:03:16] Speaker 03: means the date on which a claim, information, or evidence was received in the Department of Veterans Affairs. [00:03:20] Speaker 03: And then 1.9B1 states that VA means all organizational units of the Department of Veterans Affairs. [00:03:26] Speaker 03: So there are already regulations unifying all of the units or all of the different sections of the Department of Veterans Affairs, meaning that receipt at one, the VHA, would mean receipt at the other, the VPA. [00:03:38] Speaker 03: Receipt is a unifying term. [00:03:40] Speaker 01: So if a claimant submitted a written communication [00:03:47] Speaker 01: claiming benefits, but not on the form for a formal claim, and delivered that to the IT department of the VA, or the custodian department of the VA. [00:04:00] Speaker 01: In your view, would that be enough to constitute an informal claim? [00:04:05] Speaker 03: Yes, Your Honor, it would, assuming that the contents of the informal claim met the requirements of an informal claim. [00:04:10] Speaker 03: They had the necessary intent. [00:04:12] Speaker 03: But that is why, actually, even on a formal claim, [00:04:15] Speaker 03: The veteran is only or a claimant is only instructed to submit to the nearest VA office. [00:04:20] Speaker 01: I'm just trying to figure out how would that ever get to the right person in the VA such that it could be really true notice to the VA that they have this particular vet or claimants informal claim on hand for them to now know they're on the clock and they need to evaluate and consider it if it's sitting [00:04:43] Speaker 01: this written communication sitting in the custodian department? [00:04:48] Speaker 01: I don't know where this particular custodian department would be located, but in this hypothetical, the receipt at VA... Think of the most strange, peculiar group within VA that would have no business handling veteran disability benefits. [00:05:07] Speaker 03: Sure, Your Honor. [00:05:08] Speaker 03: As a practical matter, scenarios like this already take place. [00:05:12] Speaker 03: There are only 58 benefits offices in the country, which means that veterans live hundreds of miles away from benefits offices. [00:05:20] Speaker 03: They do, however, go to VA treatment centers, and they're located in domiciliaries, often throughout the entire country, which are much more dispersed, and they're much more close to veterans' homes and within traveling distance. [00:05:33] Speaker 03: And veterans do very often come to non-veterans' benefits offices with claims, both formal and informal. [00:05:40] Speaker 03: This is already a process. [00:05:41] Speaker 03: And what happens is, once an informal claim has been filed, it triggers VA's duty, once it receives information of that claim, to send a formal benefits claim form. [00:05:59] Speaker 03: The reason for that particular formal form is that there are software at VA, when that's scanned, [00:06:05] Speaker 03: it is automatically input into the veterans benefits system. [00:06:09] Speaker 01: I'm just curious, is there anything anywhere, maybe the VA manual that sort of explains how the VA will handle an informal claim that's received somewhere other than the Veterans Benefits Administration? [00:06:23] Speaker 03: There must be, Your Honor, because there was already at the time that these facts arose from Mr. Jones, that in [00:06:31] Speaker 03: that a VHA record could itself constitute an informal claim and that was under 3.157. [00:06:36] Speaker 01: That what could? [00:06:37] Speaker 03: It could constitute an informal. [00:06:38] Speaker 01: What could constitute an informal claim? [00:06:40] Speaker 03: A VHA record. [00:06:41] Speaker 03: A record, could be a VA treatment record, could be a record just that happens to be held at VHA. [00:06:47] Speaker 01: What regulation was that you said? [00:06:48] Speaker 03: 3.157B1, report of examination or hospitalization as a claim for increase or to reopen. [00:06:55] Speaker 03: That of course is [00:06:57] Speaker 03: as a claim for increase or to reopen, which Mr. Jones was not making. [00:07:00] Speaker 03: He was actually making an initial claim. [00:07:03] Speaker 03: But in this case, to answer your question, yes, there are already pathways in motion. [00:07:08] Speaker 03: There already is. [00:07:08] Speaker 03: There must be something in the training manual, the M21, as far as how those automatically, without some kind of triggering mechanism or anything like that, constitute an informal claim. [00:07:20] Speaker 01: Did you raise that argument to the Veterans Court below? [00:07:23] Speaker 03: Yes, Your Honor, we did. [00:07:24] Speaker 03: And we did on brief here as well. [00:07:27] Speaker 03: So for these reasons a claim can be initiated at VHA and the Veterans Court aired as a matter of law when it found that unobtained VA treatment records don't constitute a communication in writing that could be deemed received by the benefits section of VA. [00:07:41] Speaker 03: For example, these records contain mental health treatment records. [00:07:46] Speaker 03: Mental health treatment records tend to be very detailed and they're very narrative in style. [00:07:51] Speaker 03: They're not like [00:07:53] Speaker 03: you know, orthopedic treatment notes that just mention RLM and degrees of motion or something like that. [00:07:58] Speaker 03: They tend to mention group therapy and they talk about social worker notes. [00:08:01] Speaker 03: So these records about mental health treatment tend to be very detailed. [00:08:05] Speaker 03: Now this analysis applies to treatment records in and outside the world of mental health treatment, but these VHA records in particular, in Mr. Jones' case, have a decent chance of containing an informal claim or evidence of a formal claim or informal claim. [00:08:19] Speaker 01: Well, just so I understand, it's unlikely that [00:08:22] Speaker 01: we would find in the medical records some written document from Mr. Jones himself saying, you know, I've been having these terrible symptoms and they were induced during my service and I'm not able to hold the job ever since then. [00:08:42] Speaker 01: I mean, there won't be something like that in the medical records, right? [00:08:45] Speaker 01: There could be, but it's unlikely. [00:08:48] Speaker 03: It's unlikely but that doesn't mean zero and they are relevant on their face anyways. [00:08:52] Speaker 01: I just want to understand is your theory that there's another way that there could be an informal claim. [00:08:58] Speaker 01: Yes. [00:08:58] Speaker 01: It's something that the doctor him or herself writes in the medical records not something that the patient actually submits. [00:09:08] Speaker 01: Yes. [00:09:08] Speaker 03: For example the records could have a notation that Mr. Jones brought with him today a completed claims form or Mr. Jones is talking to me in an effort to [00:09:16] Speaker 03: get to file a claim for service connection. [00:09:19] Speaker 03: Mr. Jones states that he's here to file a claim right now for his mental health condition. [00:09:23] Speaker 04: Is it enough for the veterans simply to say, treat it? [00:09:26] Speaker 04: The doctor says, I believe that you may have this PTSD or something. [00:09:33] Speaker 04: Is it enough for the veterans to say, go ahead and treat it? [00:09:38] Speaker 04: I want to see a mental health counselor or something. [00:09:42] Speaker 04: Is that an informal claim? [00:09:44] Speaker 04: Probably not, Your Honor. [00:09:45] Speaker 03: The intent to file is probably the showing of intent. [00:09:48] Speaker 04: There's got to be something in writing, correct? [00:09:50] Speaker 03: Well, it has to be something in writing, but it doesn't necessarily have to... Does it have to come from the veteran? [00:09:54] Speaker 03: No, it does not have to come from the veteran, Your Honor. [00:09:55] Speaker 03: It can come from the veteran's representative. [00:09:57] Speaker 04: What are the physician's notes? [00:09:59] Speaker 03: It can be generated from the physician's notes. [00:10:01] Speaker 03: That is possible, depending upon the content of those notes. [00:10:04] Speaker 04: If the physician says in the notes, veteran wishes to continue treatment for PTSD, is that enough for an informal claim? [00:10:13] Speaker 03: No, I don't believe so, Your Honor. [00:10:15] Speaker 03: I don't believe that alone would be enough. [00:10:17] Speaker 03: So we urge this court to hold, first, that the unobtained VA treatment records are relevant as a matter of law, and second, that informal claims or formal claims can be initiated at the Veterans Health Administration. [00:10:27] Speaker 01: Just before you go away, there is some requirement in the duty to assist that maybe there isn't a duty to produce something if there's no reasonable possibility that it could assist in a claim. [00:10:41] Speaker 01: Yes, Your Honor. [00:10:44] Speaker 01: How does that reconcile with your view that, as a matter of law, any and all medical records, even irrelevant medical records, need to be produced? [00:10:58] Speaker 03: The no reasonable possibility statement can be taken either as a statement of relevance or a statement of prejudice. [00:11:04] Speaker 03: So if it's relevance, we have to presume relevance under Moore as a matter of law, and under McGee, and also 3.159 instructs us that relevance [00:11:13] Speaker 03: the appropriate inquiry when looking into VA treatment records. [00:11:15] Speaker 03: If it is a prejudice inquiry instead, and we've just talked about scenarios where, yes, it's possible that these records could contain these type of statements that qualify, these type of written communications that qualify as an informal claim. [00:11:29] Speaker 03: So there is a reasonable possibility. [00:11:30] Speaker 03: We were just discussing those reasonable possibilities. [00:11:32] Speaker 03: And for that reason, the Veterans Court erred when it made that determination of law. [00:11:37] Speaker 02: Okay, thank you. [00:11:38] Speaker 02: Let's hear from the government. [00:11:41] Speaker 02: Tell me how to say your name, sir. [00:11:43] Speaker 02: Mr. Airossi, please proceed. [00:11:45] Speaker 00: Thank you, and may it please the court. [00:11:48] Speaker 00: Your Honor, this case should be remanded. [00:11:50] Speaker 00: I think everyone here agrees that it should be remanded. [00:11:52] Speaker 00: The reason why it should be remanded is because the treatment medical records were not put into the RBA before the Veterans Court. [00:12:01] Speaker 00: And that procedural error deprived the Veterans Court of its ability to rule on a complete natural record. [00:12:06] Speaker 01: I think we should or need to resolve the question of what part of the VA an informal claim needs to be. [00:12:13] Speaker 01: Submitted to? [00:12:14] Speaker 00: Absolutely not. [00:12:14] Speaker 00: I think that this court is not in the business of issuing advisory opinions. [00:12:17] Speaker 00: And what the appellant here was really asking for is an advisory opinion on if these records were never, if these records actually contained an informal claim, what next steps would need to happen. [00:12:29] Speaker 00: And I think that the issue of whether they were brought forth at the VHA in a hospital versus the Veterans Benefit Administration is not something this court needs to. [00:12:41] Speaker 04: Wouldn't that go to the intent of the veterans? [00:12:44] Speaker 04: The intent to file for disability is an element of an informal claim. [00:12:51] Speaker 04: So why wouldn't where the veteran drops off this claim be part of the intent element? [00:12:59] Speaker 00: To be clear, I'm not suggesting that where a veteran may attempt to submit an informal claim has no bearing on the relevance or the question of whether the veteran intended to submit [00:13:13] Speaker 00: an informal claim, but rather simply that that's one of at least two or three different questions and issues that this court doesn't need to resolve in order to get the veteran the opportunity she now has to make a proper argument based on a complete record at the Veterans Court. [00:13:29] Speaker 01: Well, let me just try to understand the government's view. [00:13:32] Speaker 01: If, in fact, Mr. Jones submitted a written communication to his doctor that the doctor retained in the medical records, [00:13:43] Speaker 01: And that written communication said, I've had terrible PTSD-like symptoms for a long time, and I think I am entitled to some kind of benefit in light of this PTSD that was induced by my military service. [00:14:00] Speaker 01: Is it the government's view that that would be enough to be an informal claim? [00:14:05] Speaker 00: Well, we supposedly note in a brief at page 37 that it is possible, it's conceivable that a veteran could walk into a VA [00:14:13] Speaker 00: medical center, perhaps we're filling out a treatment form or a questionnaire and say, you know, I've had terrible headaches and I think I may have PTSD. [00:14:24] Speaker 00: I'll bet you it's because of my service in the Mideast. [00:14:27] Speaker 00: I think I'm entitled to disability. [00:14:28] Speaker 00: Write down a note, hand it to the VA. [00:14:30] Speaker 00: We're not... To the doctor. [00:14:32] Speaker 00: To the doctor. [00:14:33] Speaker 00: And we're not arguing that something like that could conceivably constitute an informal claim. [00:14:38] Speaker 00: Of course, there's nothing in the record that even suggests anything like that took place here. [00:14:42] Speaker 00: the medical records as we pointed out. [00:14:44] Speaker 01: Okay, I'm just trying to understand because are you saying that what I'm hearing you say sounds a little different than what I saw the Veterans Court saying? [00:14:54] Speaker 00: Well, I think that what the Veterans Court's focus here is or was on the question of whether there was a reasonable possibility of these medical records assisting the veteran. [00:15:05] Speaker 00: So, you know, what happened here is important to remember, Mrs. Jones appealed the board's decision and argued that the VA failed in its duty. [00:15:12] Speaker 01: Remembering or misunderstanding the Veterans Court? [00:15:15] Speaker 01: I thought the Veterans Court was saying, submitting something to the Veterans Health Administration is never going to be an informal claim. [00:15:25] Speaker 01: You have to submit it to the Veterans Benefits Administration. [00:15:29] Speaker 00: Is that what the Veterans Court said? [00:15:31] Speaker 00: There were three things that the Veterans Court said that were all related. [00:15:34] Speaker 00: The first of which was going to the question of whether there was a reasonable chance of these medical records aiding the veteran and substantiating his claim. [00:15:43] Speaker 00: And if there was no reasonable chance, then there would not have been a failure by the VA in its duty to assist. [00:15:50] Speaker 00: After that discussion, the Veterans Court then said, well, even if it could be shown that the medical records could have contained, even if there could have been an informal claim embedded in the medical records, then Mrs. Jones has failed to provide any authority for either of the propositions that [00:16:10] Speaker 00: that informal claim had to have found its way to the VBA, to the Veterans Benefits Administration, and it had to constitute a communication writing. [00:16:17] Speaker 00: So there are three main parts for the two. [00:16:18] Speaker 00: So is the answer to my question yes? [00:16:20] Speaker 01: That the Veterans Court's conception of what is a proper informal claim requires the informal claim to be submitted to the Veterans Benefits Administration and cannot satisfy the informal claim requirements if it is submitted to the Veterans Health Administration. [00:16:36] Speaker 00: I think that's right, Your Honor. [00:16:37] Speaker 00: I think that the Veterans Court [00:16:39] Speaker 01: It seems to... You're saying actually there is some daylight where an informal claim could conceivably be filed with the Veterans Health Administration. [00:16:48] Speaker 00: That's right. [00:16:49] Speaker 00: And we explicitly admit that in our brief at page 37. [00:16:52] Speaker 00: We recognize that it's entirely possible that that would be the case. [00:16:55] Speaker 00: I mean, that could be a scenario where a veteran could submit an informal claim. [00:17:01] Speaker 00: In this case, as I mentioned, there's no suggestion of that whatsoever. [00:17:05] Speaker 00: And I think that the more important point in terms of looking at [00:17:08] Speaker 00: the, what the Veterans Court did here is the Veterans Court was, when Mrs. Jones appealed, it was her burden to prove that the, the Veterans, the Board of Veterans Appealed aired in filling together medical records. [00:17:24] Speaker 00: And what the Veterans Court did was say, has Mrs. Jones demonstrated a reasonable chance, a reasonable possibility of these medical records, even assuming that they were never obtained by the VA? [00:17:35] Speaker 00: as she demonstrated there was a reasonable chance of an informal claim appearing in those medical records. [00:17:40] Speaker 00: And based on the record, the Veterans Court said no, because Mr. Jones himself explicitly admitted, he said he never alleged that he ever expressed an intent to file a claim to his VA doctors in 2000 or 2001. [00:17:53] Speaker 00: He stated he never made a decision whether to file a claim or not, because he was never given the information about the details of his medical condition. [00:18:00] Speaker 00: These are all appendix pages two and three. [00:18:02] Speaker 02: But you have a veteran here with mental health problems. [00:18:07] Speaker 02: The fact that he said, you know, gosh, I didn't know what to do. [00:18:11] Speaker 02: I didn't know I could decide to file a claim. [00:18:14] Speaker 02: That doesn't mean there couldn't still be an informal claim filed, does it? [00:18:18] Speaker 02: I mean, if he walked in to the doctor and said, and the doctor said to him, you have mental health problems. [00:18:23] Speaker 02: And he said, this is from my time in service. [00:18:25] Speaker 02: I want to get benefits for this. [00:18:27] Speaker 02: I'm really struggling. [00:18:28] Speaker 02: I can't work or whatever. [00:18:30] Speaker 02: If he said all these things to the doctor, couldn't that constitute an informal claim? [00:18:37] Speaker 00: I think based on what you just described, no, it wouldn't because there has to be an intent to apply for benefits. [00:18:43] Speaker 02: You just said, I want benefits for this. [00:18:46] Speaker 02: I can't work. [00:18:47] Speaker 02: I'm out of work because of this mental health problem. [00:18:50] Speaker 02: I want benefits. [00:18:51] Speaker 02: I want the VA to pay for this because this happened because of my time in service. [00:18:56] Speaker 02: What if he reported all of that to the doctor? [00:18:58] Speaker 02: Couldn't that constitute an informal claim? [00:19:00] Speaker 02: It's an intent. [00:19:01] Speaker 02: It seems to me to be evidencing an intent to seek benefits. [00:19:06] Speaker 00: I'm not sure that would satisfy the communication writing part of. [00:19:09] Speaker 02: What if the doctor wrote it down? [00:19:10] Speaker 02: Exactly. [00:19:11] Speaker 02: Veteran just told me he intends to seek. [00:19:14] Speaker 02: What if the doctor wrote into the notes, veteran is seeking benefits for PTSD. [00:19:22] Speaker 02: What if the doctor wrote that down in the treatment notes? [00:19:26] Speaker 02: veteran has reported to me that he is seeking benefits for PTSD. [00:19:32] Speaker 00: To be clear, Your Honor, I'll answer your question in just a moment. [00:19:34] Speaker 00: I want to reiterate, I think that this entire line of questioning is not necessary to resolve this issue. [00:19:40] Speaker 00: But in that case, I think the problem with saying we're going to create informal claims based on all of these hypothetical, as you mentioned, is that what we're doing is we're foisting an additional irrelevant [00:19:53] Speaker 00: benefits burden onto these medical professionals. [00:19:55] Speaker 00: The doctors and nurses who are seeing the veterans who are trying to treat their conditions are now going to be under... Wait, wait, time out. [00:20:00] Speaker 02: You're worried about the stress or the hassle it might cause a doctor to have to report it? [00:20:08] Speaker 02: This guy's got PTSD because he was bagging bodies in a war. [00:20:13] Speaker 02: You're worried about the stress the doctor might have to suffer because a veteran has reported, acclaimed him, a veteran whose job it was to [00:20:23] Speaker 02: body, take dead bodies and put them in bags and ship them home. [00:20:29] Speaker 02: You're worried about the administrative hassle it might cause as opposed to getting this guy benefits? [00:20:37] Speaker 00: No, Your Honor, absolutely not. [00:20:38] Speaker 00: What I'm worried about is getting the veteran the proper and effective complete medical treatment that he deserves. [00:20:43] Speaker 00: And that issue is, that medical question, that medical treatment issue is for the doctors and nurses. [00:20:48] Speaker 00: So I'm not worried about the doctor having to file [00:20:51] Speaker 00: or potentially create more paperwork. [00:20:52] Speaker 00: I'm worried about distracting the medical professionals from their focuses on the question of the veteran's medical conditions. [00:20:59] Speaker 02: Wait, you're worried that if he files a claim with them, it'll distract them from giving him proper treatment and so therefore we shouldn't treat these things as claims by the veteran because they might distract the doctor? [00:21:10] Speaker 00: Your Honor, I think that having doctors be concerned about anything other than the veteran's medical condition is suboptimal. [00:21:18] Speaker 00: That's what I'm trying to say. [00:21:19] Speaker 00: Again, I think that this issue of whether it needs to be filed at the Veterans Health Administration or the VA or somewhere else is irrelevant because we've already acknowledged that there was a procedural order committed by the VA here and that we think the Veterans Court should get another fresh look at these issues. [00:21:39] Speaker 02: But you are asking us to give them a fresh look at whether all the records were before the board. [00:21:45] Speaker 02: But the government in this case stipulated that all the medical records were not in front of them. [00:21:50] Speaker 02: So as far as I'm concerned, you're bound by that stipulation. [00:21:53] Speaker 02: So any vacate and remand that I give you is not going to permit the Veterans Court to decide whether they were already looked at, because the government said they weren't. [00:22:01] Speaker 02: It's going to go all the way back for a do-over. [00:22:04] Speaker 02: That's what's going to happen. [00:22:05] Speaker 00: I'm not sure what you're talking about in terms of the stipulation. [00:22:08] Speaker 00: I think that if you're referencing the briefing before the Veterans Court, what happened there was that the VA attorney [00:22:15] Speaker 00: said the question of whether the medical records are before the board is irrelevant for these particular reasons. [00:22:21] Speaker 00: And they cite, I think, page maybe, I don't remember which page of the briefing that they cited as proof in the appendix for our admission that the medical records are not before the board. [00:22:32] Speaker 00: The VA said, look, your honor is at the Veterans Court. [00:22:35] Speaker 00: You don't have to address whether the medical records are there or not, because these other reasons show that they could not have [00:22:45] Speaker 00: served as an informed claim that could not have substantiated his claim at the board. [00:22:51] Speaker 00: So in that sense, I think I would differ a little bit about Your Honor's hypothetical there. [00:22:56] Speaker 00: But ultimately, I think, as you recognize, both parties agree that this needs to be remanded. [00:23:02] Speaker 00: And I think that giving the Veterans Court the ability to, if it decides it needs to remand to the board to make sure that all the records are there, that's understandable. [00:23:13] Speaker 00: Issuing an opinion on all of these other raised issues is nothing more than advisory opinions. [00:23:17] Speaker 00: I don't think this court needs to do that. [00:23:21] Speaker 00: There's nothing further. [00:23:21] Speaker 00: I'll yield the rest of my time. [00:23:28] Speaker 02: We have some rebuttal time. [00:23:29] Speaker 02: Please proceed. [00:23:33] Speaker 02: I assume you're not worried about whatever stress it might cause the doctors or how they might be distracted. [00:23:37] Speaker 03: No, Your Honor. [00:23:38] Speaker 03: That is not a concern that we're bringing to the court today. [00:23:41] Speaker 03: Unless the court has any questions the court would like to address, we're prepared to. [00:23:46] Speaker 03: Thank you. [00:23:47] Speaker 03: Alright, we thank both counsels. [00:23:49] Speaker 03: The case is taken under submission.