Clemons v. Shinseki

23 Vet. App. 1 (2009), decided February 17, 2009. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims, No. 07-0558, per curiam before Judges Kasold, Hagel and Lance. Precedential. Board decision set aside and remanded.

If you wrote one condition on the form and VA denied you because you turned out to have a different one, this is the case.

What it holds

A claim for a named diagnosis is not a claim limited to that diagnosis. It is a claim for whatever condition is reasonably encompassed by three things: how you described the claim, the symptoms you described, and the information you or VA put into the record.

The reasoning runs through competence. A layperson can report what they feel; they generally cannot diagnose. The court said so plainly — "[a]s a self-represented layperson at the time his claim was filed, the appellant had neither the legal or medical knowledge to narrow the universe of his claim or his current condition to PTSD." So:

"Reasonably, the appellant did not file a claim to receive benefits only for a particular diagnosis, but for the affliction his mental condition, whatever that is, causes him."

The court added a small textual point with real weight: VA's own regulation on a "substantially complete application" asks the claimant to identify "any medical condition(s) on which it is based." The plural "indicates that a single claim can encompass more than one condition."

What went wrong in the record

Mr. Clemons served aboard the USS Rochester during the Korean War, where he described firing on enemy positions and loading the bodies of American servicemen into the ship's freezer. He filed for "P.T.S.D. Korea War."

Testing did not support a PTSD diagnosis. It did support an anxiety disorder NOS with PTSD features, and a schizoid disorder — and one doctor related the condition to service. The Board denied the claim because PTSD was not confirmed, and made no finding at all about what condition he actually had.

The court's description of that is worth reading twice:

"[T]he Board denied the claim because the appellant's hypothesized diagnosis—one he is incompetent to render—proved incorrect, instead of confronting the difficult questions of what current mental condition actually existed and whether it was incurred in or aggravated by service."

And: "the fact that the appellant may be wrong about the nature of his condition does not relieve the Secretary of his duty to properly adjudicate the claim."

Where the limit is

This is not a rule that VA must hunt through your file for every condition you might possibly claim. A later decision put that memorably: VA need not "conduct an unguided safari through the record to identify all conditions for which the veteran may possibly be able to assert entitlement."

The court itself drew two boundaries:

• If no current condition is diagnosed at all, the claim can be denied for exactly that. Had Mr. Clemons claimed PTSD and had no mental condition whatsoever, "the claim could have been properly denied for lack of a diagnosis for any current mental condition."
• If the evidence supports a condition you never sought benefits for, that is different again. There has to be some expressed intent to apply, and "[t]he mere presence of the medical evidence does not establish an intent on the part of the veteran to seek service connection."

So what you write still matters — not because it fences you in to a diagnosis, but because how you describe your symptoms is what defines the claim's reach. Describing what you actually experience does more work than naming a condition you read about. That is the practical lesson, and it is the same one on lay statements.

Not the same as reopening

The court spent several pages distinguishing Boggs v. Peake, which holds that distinctly diagnosed diseases are separate claims. Boggs is about finality — what happens when a claim was already denied and a new diagnosis arrives later. Clemons is about scope at the front end, while the claim is still being developed. Treating every new diagnosis during initial development as a separate claim, the court said, would actually hurt veterans: it would force repeated new filings, risk later effective dates, and let differences of medical opinion masquerade as different conditions.

Finding the opinion

Published at 23 Vet. App. 1. Unlike several other decisions on this list, this one does not appear in the Veterans Court's public document directory, and its published-opinion index begins at 2010. Use the "Search Decisions and Opinions" tool linked from the court's site, or a law library's reporter set, on the citation and docket number 07-0558.

Reviewed October 6, 2026