Justices Hear Case on Denial of Help to Veteran

Justices Hear Case on Denial of Help to Veteran
By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: December 6, 2010
WASHINGTON — Justice Stephen G. Breyer wanted to know whether it was possible that Congress intended to deny help to veterans who missed filing deadlines because of the very disabilities for which they sought help.

“You have someone who served his country and was wounded and has post-traumatic stress syndrome or schizophrenia,” Justice Breyer said at a Supreme Court argument Monday. “Who in Congress would have likely thought such a thing?”

But the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit last year ruled that Congress had indeed meant to bar the courthouse door to David L. Henderson, who served on the front lines in the Korean War and was discharged after receiving a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. That disability, his lawyers said, caused him to bungle a deadline.

The appeals court said its ruling was required by a 2007 decision of the Supreme Court that said deadlines for filing appeals must be applied strictly.

The appeals court’s ruling in the Henderson case, according to a dissent from three of its judges, created “a Kafkaesque adjudicatory process in which those veterans who are most deserving of service-connected benefits will frequently be those least likely to obtain them.”

Mr. Henderson, who died while his Supreme Court case was pending, had sought additional government help for his condition in 2001. He was turned down in 2004. A federal law gave him 120 days to appeal that determination to the United States Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims, but it took him 135 days.
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Justices Hear Case on Denial of Help to Veteran