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TDIU: From Board Denial to Court Reversal

The two-step reality of a tdiu appeal: what the Board does with these issues, and — when veterans appeal a denial to the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims — the arguments that get Board denials set aside.

What this is computed from: 30,584 decisions of the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims, identified inside a 39,330-document public court-decision corpus and summarized by machine analysis. Every docket number shown below was verified to appear in the court's published decision text in that corpus (112 verified; 0 candidate examples were dropped for failing verification). Selection effect: only Board decisions a veteran chose to appeal reach the Court — most Board denials are never appealed, so these rates describe appealed cases, not all denials. Data build: 2026-08-16.

Step 2 — appealed denials at the Court

CAVC cases analyzed involving tdiu
5,943
Board decision disturbed
52.2% (3,105)

Arguments that won — verified dockets

CAVC docket 21-1137 · verified · denial type: unclassified

Board failed to provide adequate reasons or bases for its effective date determination

CAVC docket 11-3655 · verified · denial type: credibility

Board failed to obtain relevant VA medical treatment records

CAVC docket 08-3811 · verified · denial type: not new material

Board legally erred by denying (rather than dismissing) a claim for an earlier effective date that was actually a request to reopen based on new and material evidence or a CUE motion.

CAVC docket 14-2585 · verified · denial type: preponderance against

Board provided inadequate reasons for finding VA satisfied its duty to assist in obtaining records

Argument summaries are machine-extracted from the cited public court decisions and lightly compressed; read the full decision by searching the docket number at CourtListener or the Court's own public search. A cited argument working in one record does not guarantee it fits another.

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