The Board remands the claim for a VA examination to address the etiology of the Veteran's bilateral foot condition, including whether it is related to service or secondary to his service-connected conditions.
The deciding factor: Remand required due to inadequate medical opinions and failure to consider lay statements regarding onset and continuity of symptoms in and since service.
- Claimed conditions
- bilateral foot condition, bilateral pes planus, bilateral plantar fasciitis, left subtalar joint arthritis
- How they argued it
- Direct service connection
- Exposure basis
- None
- Rating assigned
- None in this decision
- Decision date
- October 16, 2025
- Citation
- A25089130
Veterans Law Judge
Decisions by this judge: 703 · Granted: 47% (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 A25089130.
What this means for you
A remand is not a loss. The Board sent the case back for more development — often a new exam or missing records — before making a final decision. Many remands later end in a grant, and the decision spells out exactly what the Board wanted to see.
What you can do next
Related decisions
Other Board decisions on a similar condition or argued the same way.
- Dismissed
The appeals regarding the evaluation of bilateral plantar fasciitis and residuals of fractures of the second, fourth, and fifth left toes, as well as the evaluation of bilateral lower extremity peripheral neuropathy with loss of use, are dismissed as untimely.
- Remanded (sent back)
The Veteran's initial compensable evaluation for hypothyroidism is denied, and the Board finds that service connection for lumbar degenerative disc disease and bilateral foot condition should be remanded due to a pre-decisional duty to assist error.
- Remanded (sent back)
The Board has decided to remand the case due to an inadequate VA medical opinion regarding the relationship between the Veteran's bilateral plantar fasciitis and his service. The Veteran is seeking service connection for this condition.
- Denied
The Board denied the Appellant's requests for earlier effective dates for his service connection for bilateral pes planus and gynecomastia scar residuals, finding that the earliest possible effective dates are the dates of receipt of the claims.
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