Case: 20-1450 Document: 12 Page: 1 Filed: 08/04/2020
NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.
United States Court of Appeals
for the Federal Circuit
______________________
JAMES B. MORRIS,
Claimant-Appellant
v.
ROBERT WILKIE, SECRETARY OF VETERANS
AFFAIRS,
Respondent-Appellee
______________________
2020-1450
______________________
Appeal from the United States Court of Appeals for
Veterans Claims in No. 18-4842, Judge Michael P. Allen.
______________________
Decided: August 4, 2020
______________________
JAMES B. MORRIS, Highland, AR, pro se.
LIRIDONA SINANI, Commercial Litigation Branch, Civil
Division, United States Department of Justice, Washing-
ton, DC, for respondent-appellee. Also represented by
ETHAN P. DAVIS, CLAUDIA BURKE, ROBERT EDWARD
KIRSCHMAN, JR.
______________________
Case: 20-1450 Document: 12 Page: 2 Filed: 08/04/2020
2 MORRIS v. WILKIE
PER CURIAM.
Mr. James B. Morris appeals the decision of the United
States Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims (“Veterans
Court”) (1) affirming a Board of Veterans’ Appeals
(“Board”) decision concluding that Mr. Morris’s entitlement
to a total disability rating based on individual unemploya-
bility (“TDIU”) benefits was properly terminated because
receipt of such compensation was based on fraud; and (2)
dismissing for lack of jurisdiction Mr. Morris’s separate
claim asserting clear and unmistakable error (“CUE”) in a
December 1986 rating decision. See Morris v. Wilkie, No.
18-4842, 2019 WL 6258853 (Vet. App. Nov. 25, 2019). For
the reasons below, we dismiss for lack of jurisdiction.
BACKGROUND
Mr. Morris served on active duty in the United States
Army from May 1966 to May 1968. In a December 1986
rating decision, a Regional Office (“RO”) of the Department
of Veterans Affairs (“VA”) concluded that Mr. Morris was
unemployable and thus entitled to TDIU benefits, effective
September 16, 1986. The RO based its determination in
part on Mr. Morris’s representations that he had been un-
employed since February 1984. In connection with his con-
tinued eligibility for TDIU benefits, Mr. Morris submitted
yearly employment questionnaire forms in 1988–1989 and
1991–1997 certifying that he had not been employed in the
previous year and that service-connected disabilities con-
tinued to prevent him from securing gainful employment.
Subsequently, in August 2011, Mr. Morris was found
guilty of 44 counts of unlawful conduct against four U.S.
agencies or departments, including “Theft of Veterans Ad-
ministration Funds . . . based on evidence that he had been
employed as an accountant in the early 1980s while at the
same time he was receiving VA compensation benefits
based on unemployability.” Morris, 2019 WL 6258853, at
*2. The Eighth Circuit affirmed the conviction, rejecting
Mr. Morris’s argument that his actions were the product of
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MORRIS v. WILKIE 3
“good-faith misinterpretations of the agencies’ definitions
of ‘work.’” United States v. Morris, 723 F.3d 934, 939 (8th
Cir. 2013); see also id. at 938–39 (concluding that sufficient
evidence supported that Mr. Morris committed “knowing
and/or intentional theft of Social Security and VA funds, as
well as knowing or intentional concealment of a material
fact (i.e., [Mr. Morris’s] ability to work) from the SSA”).
In April 2012, the RO discontinued Mr. Morris’s TDIU
benefits, effective September 16, 1986, because the evi-
dence adduced at Mr. Morris’s criminal trial demonstrated
that his benefits were obtained through fraud. The Board
upheld the RO’s termination of TDIU benefits, finding in
relevant part that the evidence demonstrated that Mr.
Morris (1) “was in fact gainfully employed as an accountant
at the time he was awarded TDIU benefits,” and that he (2)
“failed to notify VA of his employment and knowingly made
and presented false statements and papers to VA concern-
ing a claim for benefits for TDIU beginning February
1988.” In re Morris, No. 15-00 604A, at 1 (Bd. Vet. App.
May 23, 2018). 1 The Board noted that a VA custodian of
record “wrote that during the course of [Mr. Morris’s] trial,
the Veteran admitted that he lied on the VA employment
certification forms and that he was, in fact, working as an
accountant and had done so since the early 1980s.” Id. at
2–3. The Board also highlighted that the VA custodian
“stated that she testified [at Mr. Morris’s criminal trial]
that if not for the Veteran’s false representations, VA
would have denied the Veteran’s TDIU claim based on his
obvious gainful employment during the entire time he
claimed unemployability.” Id. (internal quotations re-
moved).
1 The Board’s decision can be found on pages 8–12 of
the supplemental appendix filed with the government’s re-
sponse brief.
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4 MORRIS v. WILKIE
Mr. Morris appealed the Board’s decision to the Veter-
ans Court and also raised an argument that the December
1986 rating decision was the product of CUE. The Veter-
ans Court affirmed the Board’s decision terminating Mr.
Morris’s entitlement to TDIU benefits on the basis of fraud
and dismissed the CUE claim for lack of jurisdiction. See
Morris, 2019 WL 6258853, at *3. Mr. Morris appealed.
DISCUSSION
We have limited jurisdiction to review decisions by the
Veterans Court. Under 38 U.S.C. § 7292, except to the ex-
tent that an appeal presents a constitutional issue, we may
not “review (A) a challenge to a factual determination, or
(B) a challenge to a law or regulation as applied to the facts
of a particular case.” 38 U.S.C. § 7292(d)(2); see also Con-
way v. Principi, 353 F.3d 1369, 1372 (Fed. Cir. 2004) (“[W]e
cannot review applications of law to fact.”). We have juris-
diction, however, to “decide all relevant questions of law.”
38 U.S.C. § 7292(d)(1). We conclude that we lack jurisdic-
tion to review any of the issues raised by Mr. Morris.
First, Mr. Morris appears to argue that the Veterans
Court misapplied 38 C.F.R. § 3.343, but to the extent the
Veterans Court applied § 3.343, Mr. Morris’s request
amounts to asking us to review the application of law to
fact, a request over which we lack jurisdiction. 38 U.S.C. §
7292(d)(2); see also Conway, 353 F.3d at 1372.
Second, Mr. Morris challenges the determination that
he committed fraud. See, e.g., Appellant’s Br. 2 (“[N]o fraud
was committed. The Employment Certification Forms I
filled out were in fact filled out correctly, because there was
nothing to claim.”). However, such a determination “is a
factual question over which we lack jurisdiction.” Roberts
v. Shinseki, 647 F.3d 1334, 1339 n.4 (Fed. Cir. 2011).
Third, Mr. Morris challenges the December 1986 rating
decision. The Veterans Court properly concluded that it
lacked jurisdiction to address Mr. Morris’s challenge
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MORRIS v. WILKIE 5
because the Board did not address the December 1986 rat-
ing decision in its decision on appeal; rather, the December
1986 rating decision had been addressed by the RO in a
July 2013 decision that Mr. Morris did not appeal. 2 Be-
cause our jurisdiction is limited to reviewing decisions by
the Veterans Court, we lack jurisdiction to consider the
merits of Mr. Morris’s challenge to the December 1986 rat-
ing decision. See 38 U.S.C. § 7292(a).
Fourth, Mr. Morris asserts that “[t]his case is totally a
violation of constitutional issues.” Appellant’s Br. 2. Con-
clusory assertions of constitutional violations are insuffi-
cient to vest this court with jurisdiction. See, e.g., Payne v.
McDonald, 587 F. App’x 649, 651 (Fed. Cir. 2014) (“Absent
an explanation providing an adequate basis for [the Vet-
eran’s] claims, mere assertions of constitutional violations
cannot invoke our jurisdiction.”). 3
CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons, we dismiss this appeal for
lack of jurisdiction.
DISMISSED
2 Indeed, we have held that the Veterans Court’s ju-
risdiction is limited to reviewing claims decided by the
Board in the decision on appeal. See, e.g., Andre v. Principi,
301 F.3d 1354, 1361–62 (Fed. Cir. 2002).
3 To the extent Mr. Morris argues that the district court
lacked jurisdiction over his criminal case, we lack jurisdic-
tion to address this issue at least because this is not an ap-
peal from the district court action. Rather, this is an
appeal from the Veterans Court, which did not address,
and would not have had jurisdiction to address, the district
court action. Likewise, we do not have jurisdiction over the
Mr. Morris’s criminal case.
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6 MORRIS v. WILKIE
COSTS
No costs.