holding that the Board cannot “evade [its] statutory responsibility [to state the reasons or bases for its conclusions] merely by adopting [a medical opinion] as its own” where the medical opinion "fails to discuss all the evidence which appears to support [the] appellant's position”
How later courts described this case
- holding that the Board cannot “evade [its] statutory responsibility [to state the reasons or bases for its conclusions] merely by adopting [a medical opinion] as its own” where the medical opinion "fails to discuss all the evidence which appears to support [the] appellant's position”
- explaining that the Board "cannot evade [its] statutory responsibility merely by adopting [a medical examiner's] opinion as its own, where . . . the [examiner's] opinion fails to discuss all the evidence which appears to support appellant's position"
- holding that the Board’s statutory obligation to provide adequate reasons or bases for its findings and conclusions serves a function similar to that of cross-examination in adversarial litigation
- holding that the Board may give greater probative weight to one examiner's opinion over another's based on its reasoning and whether prior clinical records or other pertinent evidence was reviewed
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
HOLDAWAY, Judge,
concurring:
I concur with both the result and, based on our precedential case law, the analysis in Judge Farley’s excellent opinion. I do feel compelled to point out, however, that the evidence that was “inadequately” discussed in the reasons or bases part of the BVA decision was contradictory and that the contradictions were those of the appellant and her deceased husband. The husband gave a quite different account of his service drinking habits at the time of his retirement than he did later on. Moreover, his wife, the appellant, testified that the heavy drinking began only toward the end of his career. We now ask the Board, through the guise of the judicially enhanced reasons or bases statutory provision, to decide which version of this evidence was truthful and then, somehow, explain why they selected the version they did. I wish them well in this endeavor. The Court has engrafted requirements on the statutory reasons or bases provision that are simply not contained in the statute. It is now our precedent and I accept it. However, it is one cat that I would like to walk backwards, at least a little bit.