This is an outlier for me. I normally don’t dabble in OSA claims but Carey is a son of a dear friend, as is his brother Brandon, both of whom I represent. So, if you’re gonna play VA poker against a foe who will do anything to deny you, one thing you’ll need is a super duper killer IMO. What better place to get one than Mednick Associates? I’ve been using them since 2016 and am still batting .1000. 

This was a long time coming. When I say ‘dear friend’, I mean my good friend Bruce Almighty.  He’s the one with a greenhouse who inspired me to go for one. Bruce was a four-tour Dustoff Medic. Carey, his son, was a Gyrine who did a couple of tours in the Sandbox and came home with a few chips and dents. He’d filed over the years and got the Bum’s rush more often than not. I took him on back in ’21 and began fixing all the things other folks had done wrong. He retired in ’22 finally as a Captain. Cool beans

I got him up to 90% but his OSA claim was still in the developmental stages of denial when I started. Once it was denied, I went to Mednick for the IMO. Believe it or not, lowly FNPs were denying it left and right. Not once, but twice and thrice. A virtual parade of doctors, psychs and them FNPs (family nurse practitioners) kept coming up with new reasons why this was not service connected. In legal terms, this is called post hoc rationalizations to re-mansplain what appears to be illegal.

The best argument was one thrown out by a real MD saying he was probably overweight while he was in the Marines. Yeah, right. They’d have that ol’ boy strapped to a Pelotron 24/7 and be starving him to death until he got to the magic BMI number. Plus he’d risk losing rank and promotion, too. But seriously. It would be in the STRs… and it wasn’t. Helloooooo?

Funny thing is VA had commissioned their own peer-reviewed study on the correlation between PTSD and OSA with or without taking weight into consideration. VA’s pukes neglected to mention that. Because VA did the study, it follows that they have constructive possession of it so they should know. If they say there’s no connection, then their IMO is worthless and they sure as shit didn’t read our IMO listing the cite in the footnotes.

I had the task of defeating four IMOs by their QTC/LHI gomers. One even occurred outside the window of the AMA rating decision parameters but it didn’t faze them a bit. They threw it in anyway. If I didn’t know any better, I would have sworn this was a setup and even Ken Carpenter couldn’t win it. They were just going to keep on throwing out post hoc rationalizations regardless of how preposterous their IMOs were. About then, I’m guessing the next IMO salvo was going to involve an alien abduction nexus.

When what should my wondering eyes behold this morning but Carey’s win. The VLJ marched through each bogus IMO and dismissed them like annoying flies. This was exactly the punji pit I laid in the Appeals Brief.  When the dust settled, the only nexus left standing was ours. In this game, that’s no small feat. Your IMO has to have a lot of ingredients to pass muster. For instance, if your IMO Huckleberry doesn’t state specifically that s/he reviewed the entire claims file, VA will say their Female Nurse Person did and therefore her $39.95 opinion is far more probative than your Board Certified MD/ Neurologist’s ruminations.

The world famous barrel protector… a rubber.

So, without further ado, check out this decision. It began with the 526 on September 7, 2020. It ended today. Not bad for a OSA VA decision. Only four years and seven months-almost a new VA land speed record. Read ’em and weep, Denis.

redact OSA legal brief

Redact BVA OSA win 10.18.2024_Redacted

One small step for a Vet. One giant leap for Vetkind.  If this only helps one Vet, it was worth it.