Crystal M. Coggins v. Office of Personnel Management

NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.
United States Court of Appeals
for the Federal Circuit
______________________
CRYSTAL M. COGGINS,
Petitioner
v.
OFFICE OF PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT,
Respondent
______________________
2024-1503
______________________
Petition for review of the Merit Systems Protection
Board in No. DC-844E-19-0411-I-1.
______________________
Decided: December 9, 2024
______________________
CRYSTAL M. COGGINS, Jonesville, NC, pro se.
JOSHUA MOORE, Commercial Litigation Branch, Civil
Division, United States Department of Justice,
Washington, DC, for respondent. Also represented by
BRIAN M. BOYNTON, ALBERT S. IAROSSI, PATRICIA M.
MCCARTHY.
______________________
Before DYK, CHEN, and CUNNINGHAM, Circuit Judges.
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COGGINS v. OPM 2
PER CURIAM.
Crystal Coggins petitions pro se for review of a decision
of the Merit Systems Protection Board (“Board”). The
Board affirmed the Office of Personnel Management’s
denial of her claim for disability retirement benefits. We
affirm.
BACKGROUND
This case presents the question of whether Ms. Coggins
was employed by the federal government for the 18-month
period required to be eligible for disability retirement
benefits under the Federal Employee Retirement System
(“FERS”), 5 U.S.C. § 8451.
From 2013 to 2015, Ms. Coggins worked as a
Registered Nurse at the Salem, Virginia, Medical Center
for the Department of Veterans Affairs (“VA”). The parties
dispute the effective date of Ms. Coggins’s appointment—
she says she started work on September 22, 2013, and the
government claims her effective start date was October 20,
2013, the date stated in her individual retirement record
(“IRR”).
On March 27, 2014, Ms. Coggins suffered a seizure
while on duty and fell to the ground. Thereafter, she used
a combination of annual leave, sick leave, and leave
without pay until her termination on June 5, 2015. She
subsequently filed an application for disability retirement
benefits with the Office of Personnel Management
(“OPM”).
While Ms. Coggins’s claim was pending, the VA
corrected her IRR, adjusting her last day of pay from
March 24, 2014, to April 10, 2014. Just as the parties
dispute her start date, they dispute her end date.
Ms. Coggins argues that her last day of pay was May 9,
2014, and the government argues that her last day of pay
was April 10, 2014, as stated in her IRR.
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COGGINS v. OPM 3
In September 2018, OPM issued a decision denying
Ms. Coggins’s application for benefits on the ground that
she failed to meet the required 18 months of creditable
service to establish eligibility for disability retirement
benefits under 5 U.S.C. § 8451. When Ms. Coggins sought
reconsideration of that decision, OPM affirmed, concluding
that she had accrued only 17 months and 8 days of
creditable federal service.
Ms. Coggins appealed to the Board. In an initial
decision, the administrative judge (“AJ”) found that
Ms. Coggins’s service began on October 20, 2013, and her
last day of pay was April 10, 2014. In total, Ms. Coggins
had taken, according to the AJ, 1469.75 hours or 8 months
and 14 days of leave without pay in 2014, for which she
received 6 months’ creditable service under the applicable
OPM regulations. Combining those 6 months of creditable
service in 2014 with Ms. Coggins’s time on duty before her
injury, as well as her creditable time in 2015 before her
termination, the AJ concluded that she had accrued
“1 year, 5 months[,] and 1 day of creditable service.” S.
App’x 16.1 Ms. Coggins also had “36 hours or 7 days of
unused sick days,” so the AJ found that she had a total of
creditable service of “1 year[,] 5 months[,] and 17 days.”2 S.
App’x 16. The AJ rejected Ms. Coggins’s arguments that
1 Citations to “S. App’x” are to the supplemental
appendix filed by the government.
2 On this point, the AJ’s decision appears to contain
a typographical or arithmetic error. As the government
notes, see Respondent Informal Br. 6 n.4, the addition of
7 days to 1 year, 5 months, and 1 day results in a final
calculation of 1 year, 5 months, and 8 days of creditable
service. The OPM decision that the AJ reviewed includes
the correct calculation, and, in any event, to the extent that
the AJ’s decision presents a different calculation than that
of OPM, Ms. Coggins benefits from the discrepancy.
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COGGINS v. OPM 4
her effective start date was September 22, 2013, because
record evidence showed that, although she may have been
scheduled to begin work that September, her start was
delayed until October, in part because of a government
shutdown at the time, during which she was furloughed.
The AJ also rejected her claim that her last day of pay was
May 9, 2014, in part on the ground that it could not
consider the bank records Ms. Coggins submitted to show
payments after April 10, 2014, to prove a later last day of
pay. In the AJ’s view, Ms. Coggins’s bank records could not
be considered because an audit by the Defense Financial
Accounting Service (“DFAS”) showed that she should not
have been paid on those later dates. The full Board denied
review and affirmed the AJ’s initial decision.
Ms. Coggins seeks review from this court. We have
jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(9).
DISCUSSION
We must affirm the judgment of the Board unless its
decision is “(1) arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion,
or otherwise not in accordance with law; (2) obtained
without procedures required by law, rule, or regulation
having been followed; or (3) unsupported by substantial
evidence.” 5 U.S.C. § 7703(c). The Board’s fact findings are
reviewed for substantial evidence, and we give no deference
to its determinations on matters of law. See Brenner v.
Dep’t of Veterans Affs., 990 F.3d 1313, 1322 (Fed. Cir. 2021).
The petitioner “bears the burden of establishing error in
the [Board’s] decision.” Jones v. Dep’t of Health & Hum.
Servs., 834 F.3d 1361, 1366 (Fed. Cir. 2016) (quoting Harris
v. Dep’t of Veterans Affs., 142 F.3d 1463, 1467 (Fed. Cir.
1998)).
Under the FERS, a federal employee must meet several
criteria to receive disability retirement benefits, one of
which is that the employee must have completed at least
18 months of creditable time of service when he or she
ceases government employment. See 5 U.S.C.
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COGGINS v. OPM 5
§ 8451(a)(1)(A). OPM regulations direct the agency to rely
upon the employee’s IRR for determining the actual period
of service, as that is “the basic record for action on all
claims for annuity or refund.” 5 C.F.R. § 831.103(a). We
have not determined the extent of OPM’s obligations to
determine the correctness of the dates in an IRR, but we
have held that “[f]urther inquiry” by the Board into the
accuracy of an IRR “is required” in cases where an
employee’s IRR contains internal contradictions. Grover v.
Off. of Pers. Mgmt., 828 F.3d 1378, 1383–84 (Fed. Cir.
2016). We assume, without deciding, that the IRR record
is not conclusive even if it is not self-contradictory.3
Ms. Coggins contends that the Board erred by relying
on her corrected IRR to identify her start and end dates for
purposes of calculating her creditable service time.
Ms. Coggins’s argument lacks merit. The Board’s decision
demonstrates that, far from reflexively relying solely upon
her corrected IRR, the Board reviewed the accuracy of the
document and concluded that it was “accurate given the
circumstances surrounding the overpayment,” and that
“the evidence [Ms. Coggins] submitted [was] insufficient to
invalidate any information contained in the corrected and
certified IRR.” S. App’x 17. The Board considered evidence
that corroborated the accuracy of Ms. Coggins’s start date
3 Several of our nonprecedential decisions have
endorsed interpretations of the regulations by OPM and
the Board that an employee’s IRR is binding. See, e.g.,
Rainone v. Off. of Pers. Mgmt., 249 F. App’x 823, 825 (Fed.
Cir. 2007). However, since our decision in Lisanti v. Office
of Personnel Management, 573 F.3d 1334 (Fed. Cir. 2009),
the Board has understood that it possesses the authority
“to review the accuracy and completeness of IRRs in the
context of appeals from OPM final decisions that rely on
them.” Conner v. Off. of Pers. Mgmt., 2014 M.S.P.B. 26 ¶6
(2014), aff’d 620 F. App’x 892 (Fed. Cir. 2015).
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COGGINS v. OPM 6
as stated in the IRR. This included “a letter from the VA
dated October 11, 2013, stating the effective date of
[Ms. Coggins’s] appointment was October 20, 2013,”
S. App’x 17, and Ms. Coggins’s own testimony that her
start date was “postponed due to the government[-]wide
furlough” at the time, S. App’x 15. Substantial evidence
supports the Board’s determinations as to Ms. Coggins’s
start date.
Ms. Coggins next argues that the end date stated in her
IRR was not correct. She contends that she should have
received an additional 67.5 hours of creditable service
because her IRR listed her last day of pay as April 10, 2014,
and she received a payout for accrued leave after that time,
on May 9, 2014. She states that the determination by
DFAS that she should not have received payment after her
last day of pay on April 10 was made in error. According to
Ms. Coggins, the DFAS audit was predicated on the fact
that she improperly received payment for accrued leave
because she failed to submit request forms before taking
certain periods of leave. Ms. Coggins argues that she did
in fact submit the required forms to the VA. She was
unable to locate those forms in time for her hearing but
discovered them shortly thereafter and included them in
her petition for review before the full Board, and on that
basis, she argues that the full Board should have granted
her petition for review. The government responds that this
argument was not properly raised previously, so the Board
correctly declined to address it. Whether the Board erred
by not addressing the merits of Ms. Coggins’s claim is
ultimately immaterial, because even if Ms. Coggins were
correct, she would stand to gain only an additional
67.5 hours of creditable time, which is insufficient to meet
the required minimum 18 months of service.4
4 In her informal reply brief, Ms. Coggins also argues
for the first time that she was previously employed by the
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COGGINS v. OPM 7
We have considered Ms. Coggins’s other arguments
and find them unpersuasive.
AFFIRMED
Costs
No costs.
U.S. Postal Service as a seasonal worker for several months
in 1998, which should have been considered creditable time
under the FERS. Ms. Coggins concedes this is a “new
argument” not previously raised before the Board. Pet’r
Informal Reply Br. 4. As such, the argument is forfeited.
See Bosley v. Merit Sys. Prot. Bd., 162 F.3d 665, 668 (Fed.
Cir. 1998) (“A party in an MSPB proceeding must raise an
issue before the administrative judge if the issue is to be
preserved for review in this court.”).
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