The Veteran's appeal for compensation under 38 U.S.C. § 1151 for recurrent staph infections status post inguinal hernia repair is dismissed due to his death.
The deciding factor: The Veteran died during the pendency of the appeal, and as a matter of law, appellants' claims do not survive their deaths.
- Claimed conditions
- recurrent staph infections
- How they argued it
- Direct service connection
- Exposure basis
- None
- Rating assigned
- None in this decision
- Decision date
- August 22, 2019
- Citation
- 19165570
Veterans Law Judge
Decisions by this judge: 2,451 · Granted: 22% (granted or partly granted, in the vetted decisions on this site)
Judge attribution: 2025 complete; earlier years partial.
This is a plain-language summary generated by AI from a public Board of Veterans’ Appeals decision. It can contain errors — always verify against the original. Look up the original decision on VA.gov (opens in a new tab) using citation 19165570.
What this means for you
A dismissal means the Board did not decide the issue on its merits — usually because it was withdrawn or had become moot. It says more about procedure than about whether a claim like this can win.
What you can do next
Related decisions
Other Board decisions on a similar condition or argued the same way.
- Remanded (sent back)
The Veteran's claim for service connection for recurrent staph infections has been denied as there is no new and relevant evidence received since the July 2015 rating decision.,The appeal of a proposed reduction in the PTSD disability rating to 50% was dismissed because it was not an appealable final decision.
- Denied
The Board denied the Veteran's claim of service connection for recurrent staph infections, finding that there was no evidence to support a relationship between his current condition and active service.
- Denied
The Board found that the Veteran did not incur an additional disability, including recurrent staph infections, due to a 1982 VA surgery. The opinion from the independent medical expert (IME) concluded it was less likely than not that the Veteran incurred these conditions as a result of the surgery.
- Remanded (sent back)
The Board has determined that the VA examination and opinion provided in May 2011 are inadequate for adjudicating the claim. The Veteran's recurrent staph infections have been remanded for an addendum opinion to address whether it is at least as likely as not that the condition began in service, was caused by service, or is otherwise causally related to active service.
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