Victor R. Ziegler, Sr. v. Department of the Interior

N OTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.
United States Court of Appeals
for the Federal Circuit
______________________
VICTOR R. ZIEGLER, SR.,
Petitioner
v.
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR,
Respondent
______________________
2025-1093
______________________
Petition for review of the Merit Systems Protection
Board in No. DE-3443-06-0454-C-4.
______________________
Decided: September 9, 2025
______________________
VICTOR R. Z IEGLER , S R., Sioux Falls, SD, pro se.
D AVID MICHAEL K ERR, Commercial Litigation Branch,
Civil Division, United States Department of Justice, Wash-
ington, DC, for respondent. Also represented by S TEVEN
J OHN G ILLINGHAM , P ATRICIA M. M CCARTHY , YAAKOV R OTH .
______________________
Case: 25-1093 Document: 37 Page: 1 Filed: 09/09/2025

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ZIEGLER v. INTERIOR 2
Before P ROST and C UNNINGHAM , Circuit Judges, and
ANDREWS , District Judge.1
P ER CURIAM .
Victor R. Ziegler, Sr., petitions for review of a Merit
Systems Protection Board (“Board”) decision that dis-
missed his appeal regarding the Uniformed Services Em-
ployment and Reemployment Rights Act of 1994
(“USERRA”) due to collateral estoppel. We affirm.
BACKGROUND
Much of the factual and procedural background rele-
vant to this opinion appears in our 2022 decision, Ziegler v.
Department of the Interior, No. 22-1182, 2022 WL 1435385
(Fed. Cir. May 6, 2022). We assume the parties’ familiarity
with this background and will not repeat it here.
In our 2022 decision, we affirmed the Board’s dismissal
of Mr. Ziegler’s USERRA claims due to his release of those
claims in a 2008 settlement agreement. Id. at *2–4. We
deemed the settlement agreement “valid and enforceable”
after explicitly rejecting Mr. Ziegler’s arguments that he
(1) executed the agreement under duress; (2) was not per-
mitted to participate in the agreement’s drafting; and
(3) did not fully understand what he was signing. Id. at *4.
Mr. Ziegler then filed another appeal with the Board,
“repeat[ing] his argument . . . that his waiver of his
USERRA rights in the 2008 settlement agreement was in-
valid.” Ziegler v. Dep’t of the Interior, DE-3443-06-0454-C-
4, 2024 WL 3882635, at *2 (M.S.P.B. Aug. 16, 2024).2
1 Honorable Richard G. Andrews, District Judge,
United States District Court for the District of Delaware,
sitting by designation.
2 A printing of the Board’s decision is included with
Mr. Ziegler’s informal brief, ECF No. 23.
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ZIEGLER v. INTERIOR 3
The Board dismissed Mr. Ziegler’s appeal due to collat-
eral estoppel arising from our 2022 decision. It observed
that collateral estoppel (also known as issue preclusion)
bars relitigating an issue when four elements are met:
(1) the issue is identical to that involved in the prior action;
(2) the issue was actually litigated in the prior action;
(3) the determination on the issue in the prior action was
necessary to the resulting judgment; and (4) the party
against whom collateral estoppel is sought had a full and
fair opportunity to litigate the issue in the prior action. Id.
at *3. And it determined that each of these four elements
was met.
As to the first and second collateral-estoppel elements,
the Board characterized the relevant issue as whether Mr.
Ziegler released his USERRA claims in the 2008 settle-
ment agreement, and it determined that this court’s 2022
decision had decided this issue. Indeed, although Mr. Zieg-
ler argued to the Board that “he signed the settlement
agreement under duress” and that he “did not understand”
the agreement before signing, the Board noted that our
2022 decision had rejected those very arguments. See id.
(“Thus, the issue presented here, with the same supporting
arguments no less, was actually litigated in [the prior pro-
ceedings].” (emphasis added)). And, after concluding that
the third and fourth elements were likewise met, the Board
dismissed. See id. at *3–4.
Mr. Ziegler timely petitioned this court for review. We
have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(9).
D ISCUSSION
We review a Board decision for whether it is “(1) arbi-
trary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not
in accordance with law; (2) obtained without procedures re-
quired by law, rule, or regulation having been followed; or
(3) unsupported by substantial evidence.” 5 U.S.C.
§ 7703(c). Mr. Ziegler, as the petitioner, bears the burden
of establishing reversible error in the Board’s decision.
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ZIEGLER v. INTERIOR 4
Sistek v. Dep’t of Veterans Affs., 955 F.3d 948, 953 (Fed. Cir.
2020).
Collateral estoppel “protects litigants from the burden
of relitigating an identical issue and promotes judicial
economy by preventing needless litigation.” Morgan v.
Dep’t of Energy, 424 F.3d 1271, 1274 (Fed. Cir. 2005). It
generally applies where: (1) an issue is identical to one de-
cided in the first action; (2) the issue was actually litigated
in the first action; (3) the resolution of the issue was essen-
tial to a final judgment in the first action; and (4) the party
defending against collateral estoppel had a full and fair op-
portunity to litigate the issue in the first action. E.g., Shell
Petroleum, Inc. v. United States, 319 F.3d 1334, 1338
(Fed. Cir. 2003). Collateral estoppel is ultimately a ques-
tion of law, which we review de novo. See Google LLC v.
Hammond Dev. Int’l, Inc., 54 F.4th 1377, 1380 (Fed. Cir.
2022).
Mr. Ziegler has not identified—nor do we see—any er-
ror in the Board’s application of collateral estoppel to bar
him from relitigating the issue of whether he released his
USERRA claims in the 2008 settlement agreement.
Mr. Ziegler nonetheless seems to argue that, if our
2022 decision concluded that he had not filed a “valid”
USERRA claim, there can be no collateral estoppel for fu-
ture USERRA claims. See Pet’r’s Informal Br. 5.3 The is-
sue we decided, however, was that he could not bring his
USERRA claims because he released those claims in the
2008 settlement agreement. And our resolution of that is-
sue applies here as well, because the issue was already lit-
igated and decided (and because the other elements of
collateral estoppel are met).
3 When citing to specific pages of Mr. Ziegler’s infor-
mal brief, we cite to the page numbers supplied by the elec-
tronic filing system in the header of the document.
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ZIEGLER v. INTERIOR 5
CONCLUSION
We have considered Mr. Ziegler’s remaining arguments
and find them unpersuasive. For the foregoing reasons, we
affirm.
AFFIRMED
Case: 25-1093 Document: 37 Page: 5 Filed: 09/09/2025

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