hey everyone I'm Amy Odom and today I'll be discussing an ongoing case at
the United States Supreme Court Ariana versus McDonough this case involves a veteran who had
some pretty traumatic experiences while in service from 1977 to 1981 and as a result of
these experiences he developed some pretty severe pts his condition was so severe that
um he argues it made him unable to understand the process for applying for benefits when he
first got out of service so he didn't and then 30 years later with the help of his brother
he was able to put together a claim and file it with the VA for his psychiatric condition
um his claim was immediately granted uh he was service connected for pts and he was rated 100
disabling which is indicative of a pretty severe psychiatric disability you have to be completely
disabled to get a hundred percent rating so um VA granted service Connection in the 100 rating
effective 2011 which was the date that he filed the claim he appealed that decision requesting
that VA give him the effective date of the day after his discharge and his legal theory is this
there's a statute 38 USC 5110 that sets forth the effective dates for service connection pension
um DIC survivor's benefits all of the effective dates are found in this statute and the specific
rule relating to service connected disability compensation isn't found in subsection B which
says that if you file your claim within one year of discharge from service the effective date of
your benefits will be the day of discharge Mr Ariano has argued that he was so severely
disabled during that first year and up until 30 years later when he filed his claim that he was
unable to file and therefore VA and the court should forgive that deadline should extend that
deadline for him and the legal term for this is called Equitable tolling so his argument is that
because he was so disabled that he was unable to file a claim within that first year and for the
30 years until 2011 that deadline that one year deadline to get the date of discharge
should be equitably told until 2011 when he did finally get some help and file his claim
so the law um on effective dates and Equitable tolling so this one-year deadline
um so far has been understood to mean that you cannot get Equitable tolling for the deadline
to file at your claim that it's not actually what we call a statute of limitations and the
statute of limitations sets a deadline for you generally to bring some sort of action
um the better the federal circuit court of appeals held in a prior case um that
you could not get Equitable tolling for that one year deadline to file your claim after discharge
um but Mr Ariana got some counsel and was able to challenge that holding from the federal circuit of
course the veterans Corps is bound by the federal circuits holding so they had to rule against Mr
Ariano but when it got back up to the federal circuit uh surprisingly the court was was split
um it went to a full panel what we call an onbank panel of the of the federal circuit
which means all of the judges on the on the cert the court looked at this case half of them said
no you can't get Equitable tolling on that one year deadline our prior case law is correct that's
the end of it therefore Mr Ariano doesn't get Equitable tolling but the other half said you can
get Equitable tolling for that one-year deadline just that Mr Ariano doesn't get it because
um his specific circumstances the disability making him unable to file a claim does not uh
qualify him for Equitable tolling or extension of that deadline under this particular statute
and there's a whole uh statutory analysis rationale for why that's so I'm not going to
get that into that now but you can read that in the Ariano federal circuit Split Decision
so we had a we have a situation then where half the federal circuit says you can get Equitable
tolling um under the statute 5110 with the effective dates for benefits and another
half saying no way no how no matter what the circumstance is just no no Equitable calling
for your effective date for benefits um so the Mr Ariana will appeal that decision up to the United
States Supreme Court um the United States Supreme Court it's very hard to get your case before them
they usually you have to ask them to even hear the case you file what's called a petition for
certiori and very very few petitions are granted a year um and this happened to be
one of the few ones that uh the court granted last summer so I'm sorry last year so the uh
parties have briefed the entire case and there was an oral argument on October 4th I believe
um where Mr ariano's Council made a what I find to be pretty compelling argument as to
why the Supreme Court should rule that Equitable tolling does apply to the effective dates and the
deadlines for filing claims to get the earliest possible effective date and the government made
its argument as to why it does not believe that equitables only should ever apply to the effective
date Provisions so now we just have to wait and see what the Supreme Court says I suspect that we
will have a decision probably by this spring will have something so and we'll probably do
another another video to get everybody up to speed on what that decision is then but let's
talk a little bit about what kind of effects this could have on Veterans well if Mr Ariana
loses not much right because it is the state of the law as it is anyway is that you can't
get Equitable tolling for the deadlines on the effective dates um but if Mr Ariana wins this case
um it would have a pretty significant impact on on Veterans disability law it would mean that
um if you can prove that for some reason within that first year discharge you were unable to
file a claim either because of a significant disability like Mr Ariana claims or because
you were misled in some way by the government or there were some other extraordinary circumstance
out of your control that last that was during that first year and last and until you were
finally able to file a claim then uh it's it's a potential that you could get an effective
date back to the date of your discharge even if it was 30 years ago like Mr Ariano
um some people are concerned that if the Supreme Court rules in Mr Ariana's favor there will be a
what they they it will open up the floodgates as they say and uh Lots thousands of vets will come
with um claims for earlier effective dates based on Equitable tolling the reality is it's still
going to be really hard to prove entitlements Equitable telling Equitable tolling is a very
like the the showing for Equitable tolling is very high it's very burdensome on the veteran you have
to show that you're if you had a disability that it rendered you completely incapable of attending
to your personal affairs During the period in time Mr Ariana's case it's 30 years that's like
that's going to be a difficult showing I'm not saying I'm not saying by any means that he can't
make that showing but it's especially since you know VA acknowledges that he's totally disabled
at least as of 2011. if you can show that he had that disability that level of disability back to
the date of discharge then um he's probably got a pretty good case for Equitable tolling but very
few cases can actually or very few claimants can actually make that showing
um so will it open the floodgates not I don't think so people may try but it's you know not
everybody's going to get Equitable tolling and uh it'll still be a very difficult case to win
um but it will be available and it'll be a potential Avenue of getting retroactive
benefits for veterans who really were for some extraordinary circumstance out of their control
unable to file their claim within that for that deadline the other thing to keep in mind is that
that one year deadline for disability compensation it doesn't mean that if you don't file your claim
within the first year of discharge you can't ever file a claim and get VA benefits you can file the
claim at any time just like Mr Ariano did 30 years after discharge so this is really about whether
you can get an extension to get retroactive benefits whether you can apply Equitable tolling
to get retroactive benefits so um it's not going to affect veterans and claimants ability to file
claims and um secure benefits going forward it would just perhaps provide another Avenue for
claimants to uh recover retroactive benefits that they would have been entitled to had they
filed the claim within that first year deadline so that's Ariana thanks so much for joining me
I'm really looking forward to seeing what the Supreme Court has to say about this and
and talking to you in the future about the uh the results of this really exciting case um please be
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