NVLSP Seeks Class Action Order Requiring VA to Automatically
Redecide Thousands of Benefit Claims Denials for Agent Orange-Related Diseases
Filed by Vietnam Veterans Who Served in the Territorial Sea of Vietnam
--- More than $4.6 billion in retroactive compensation has
been paid to Vietnam veterans who set foot on land but nothing to Blue Water
Vietnam Veterans---
The 1991 Consent Decree applies to a class consisting of
hundreds of thousands of Vietnam veterans and their survivors who applied to
the VA for service connected disability and death benefits due to exposure to
Agent Orange, the toxic herbicide used by the U.S. government during the
Vietnam War. That Decree required the VA
to pay retroactive benefits to members of the class whenever, during the period
from 1991 to 2015, the VA recognized an additional disease is associated with
exposure to Agent Orange.
Since 2002, the VA paid under the terms of the Consent
Decree more than $4.6 billion in retroactive benefits to Vietnam veterans and
their survivors if the veteran set foot on the land mass of Vietnam—but
absolutely no benefits to Vietnam veterans who served on ships in the
territorial sea of the Republic of Vietnam.
The VA’s policy was that these “Blue Water” Vietnam veterans were not
covered by the language of the Agent Orange Act of 1991, which provided that
veterans who “served in the Republic of Vietnam” during the Vietnam era “shall
be presumed to have been exposed during such service” to Agent Orange. But in 2019, in Procopio v. Wilkie, the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit rejected VA’s interpretation of that
language and ruled that Congress intended that all Vietnam veterans who served
on ships in the territorial sea of Vietnam—within 12 nautical miles of the
coast—be entitled to the presumption of exposure.
NVLSP’s enforcement motion seeks injunctive relief requiring
the VA to redecide the thousands of prior decisions that denied retroactive
benefits under the Nehmer Consent Decree due to the VA policy rejected in
Procopio v. Wilkie.
“The VA’s refusal to correct the wrong it has perpetrated
since 2002 means that Blue Water Vietnam veterans and their survivors will
continue to be deprived of the benefits to which they are entitled under the
Consent Decree. Some of these veterans
have already waited far too long for their country to do right by them. For many of these veterans and their
survivors, the overdue compensation could be life-changing,” said National
Veterans Legal Services Program Executive Director Bart Stichman.
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