BVA Case 08-3834: Back

The Veterans Court affirmed the Board’s judgment because it concluded that treatise evidence submitted by Beck was insufficient to establish a nexus between his back injury and his service, or undermine the VA medical examiner’s opinion that Beck’s back injury was not service connected.

After considering all of the evidence before it, the Board concluded that Beck’s back injury was not service connected.

The Board concluded that the “failure to 3 According to Beck, the treatise evidence reflected “that most people with back pain do not seek medical treatment; back pain is typically recurrent; and the absence of back pain on any give[n] day does not imply normal lumbar function.

Regarding the treatises submitted by Beck, the Board noted that a medical article or treatise can provide important support when combined with an opinion of a medical professional if the medical article or trea- tise evidence discusses generic relationships with a degree of certainty such that, under the facts of a specific case, there is at least plausible causality based upon objective facts rather than on a un- substantiated lay medical opinion.

In Beck’s case, however, because the treatise evidence sub- mitted was not accompanied by the opinion of any medical expert, the Board concluded that the treatise evidence was insufficient to establish the required nexus between his back injury and his time in service.

Finally, the Board determined that the various letters from Beck’s friends and family had minimal probative value because the letters were not entirely consistent, and they were written 40 years after the relevant events occurred.

In light of these conclusions, on October 31, 2008, the Board denied Beck’s claim.

Beck asserted that the Board erred by refusing to consider the treatise evi- dence for two distinct purposes: (1) to establish an etio- logical nexus; and (2) to undermine the credibility of the BECK v.