Shinseki, Secretary of Veterans Affairs v. Sanders
- Decided
- April 21, 2009
- Docket
- 07-1209
- Status
- Published
- Jurisdiction
- Federal
Cited 2,961 timesNo negative treatment found in this library
What later courts said
- holding that 38 U.S.C. 7261(b)(2) requires the Veterans Court to apply the same kind of "harmless-error" rule that courts ordinarily apply in civil cases — Henderson v. Shinseki (2009)
- holding that 38 U.S.C. § 7261(b)(2) requires the Veterans Court to apply the same kind of “harmless-error” rule that courts ordinarily apply in civil cases — Henderson v. Shinseki (2009)
- holding that § 706 requires application of "the same kind of 'harmless-error' rule that courts ordinarily apply in civil cases" — Swagway, LLC v. Int'l Trade Comm'n (2019)
Each line is a later court’s own words about this case, not a summary. Read the opinion before relying on it.
How the opinion begins
Justice Breyer delivered the opinion of the Court.
In these two civil cases, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) denied veterans’ claims for disability benefits. In both cases the VA erroneously failed to provide the veteran with a certain kind of statutorily required notice. See 38 U. S. C. § 5103(a). In both cases the VA argued that the error was harmless. And in both cases the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, after setting forth a framework for determining whether a notice error is harmless, rejected the VA’s argument.
In our view, the Federal Circuit’s “harmless-error” framework is too complex and rigid, its presumptions impose unreasonable evidentiary burdens upon the VA, and it is too likely too often to require the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims (Veterans Court) to treat as harmful errors that in fact are harmless. We conclude that the framework conflicts with established law. See § 7261(b)(2) (Veterans Court must “take due account of the rule of prejudicial error”). [*400]
Statutes cited
Cite this
Shinseki, Secretary of Veterans Affairs v. Sanders, 556 U.S. 396 (2009)Read the full opinion
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