Dolphus L. Collins v. Douglas A. Collins, Secretary of Veterans Affairs

Note: This disposition is nonprecedential.
United States Court of Appeals
for the Federal Circuit
______________________
DOLPHUS L. COLLINS,
Claimant-Appellant
v.
DOUGLAS A. COLLINS, SECRETARY OF
VETERANS AFFAIRS,
Respondent-Appellee
______________________
2025-1452
______________________
Appeal from the United States Court of Appeals for
Veterans Claims in No. 24-7738, Judge Joseph L. Toth.
______________________
Decided: May 13, 2026
______________________
D OLPHUS L. COLLINS , Jackson, MS, pro se.
VIJAYA SURAMPUDI, Commercial Litigation Branch,
Civil Division, United States Department of Justice, Wash-
ington, DC, for respondent-appellee. Also represented by
WILLIAM J AMES G RIMALDI, PATRICIA M. M CCARTHY, B RETT
SHUMATE ; TYRONE COLLIER, BRIAN D. G RIFFIN , Office of
General Counsel, United States Department of Veterans
Affairs, Washington, DC.
______________________
Case: 25-1452 Document: 34 Page: 1 Filed: 05/13/2026

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COLLINS v. COLLINS 2
Before LOURIE, BRYSON , and CHEN , Circuit Judges.
PER C URIAM.
Dolphus Collins, a veteran, appeals from an order of
the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims (“the Veterans
Court”) denying his petition for a writ of mandamus.
I
Mr. Collins served in the United States Army for ap-
proximately one month between June and July of 1974.
During that period, he sought treatment for back spasms.
After he was discharged from military service, he sought
compensation for a back disability. In 1976, a Veterans
Administration regional office denied his claim. Mr. Col-
lins did not appeal from that decision, and the decision
then became final. See Collins v. Shinseki, 494 F. App’x 88
(Fed. Cir. 2012) (describing the factual background of this
case).
In 1999, Mr. Collins, who was represented by an attor-
ney at the time, took an appeal from an adverse decision of
the Board of Veterans’ Appeals. The Veterans Court re-
manded the case to the Board, and granted a fee award
sought by Mr. Collins’s attorney under the Equal Access to
Justice Act, 28 U.S.C. § 2412(d). Gov’t Br. 4.
In 2006, the regional office reopened Mr. Collins’s
claim. A medical examiner determined that Mr. Collins
suffered at that time from a degenerative disc condition,
which was more related to his age than to the tissue injury
he had suffered in service. Collins v. Shinseki, 494 F. App’x
at 88. The regional office denied service connection for the
disability, and Mr. Collins appealed to the Board of Veter-
ans’ Appeals. The Board upheld the regional office’s deci-
sion on the ground that there was insufficient evidence of
a nexus between Mr. Collins’s disc condition and his ser-
vice. Id. Mr. Collins appealed that decision to the Veterans
Court, which affirmed. Mr. Collins then appealed to this
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COLLINS v. COLLINS 3
court, which dismissed the appeal for lack of jurisdiction.
Id.
In September 2024, Mr. Collins filed with the Veterans
Court a document that the court subsequently construed as
a petition for a writ of mandamus. Collins v. Collins, No.
24-7738 (Vet. App.), Docket No. 1 (09/26/2024). The peti-
tion referred to the prior proceeding in which Mr. Collins’s
attorney had received an award of attorney fees. In the
documents filed with the Veterans Court in support of the
petition, Mr. Collins appeared to contend that the Depart-
ment of Veterans Affairs paid the attorney $5,480, as or-
dered by the Veterans Court, but that the attorney dropped
out of the case at some point and did not repay Mr. Collins
the funds Mr. Collins had paid the attorney for his services.
In several submissions supporting his petition, Mr. Collins
appeared to contend that he is entitled to recover the attor-
ney fee award that was paid to his attorney, plus interest.
See id., Docket No. 6 (11/19/2024); Docket No. 12
(12/20/2024); Docket No. 13 (12/20/2024); Docket No. 14
(12/23/2024); Docket No. 15 (12/29/2024).
The Veterans Court dismissed the petition on the
ground that Mr. Collins had not met “the minimum plead-
ing standards necessary to allow the Court to assess
whether extraordinary relief is warranted,” S. App. 8–9.
The court provided that the dismissal of the petition would
be “without prejudice to refiling in accordance with” Rule
21 of the Rules of the United States Court of Appeals for
Veterans Claims, which governs pleading standards for re-
quests for extraordinary relief. Id. The court noted that
any future petition filed by Mr. Collins regarding the same
subject matter “should contain the information and docu-
mentation necessary to support entitlement to the relief
sought and for the Court to understand the issues pre-
sented.” Id.
Following the entry of judgment, Mr. Collins appealed
to this court.
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COLLINS v. COLLINS 4
II
The Veterans Court has authority under the All Writs
Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1651, to issue writs of mandamus in ap-
propriate cases. Martin v. O’Rourke, 891 F.3d 1338, 1342–
43 (Fed. Cir. 2018); Cox v. West, 149 F.3d 1360, 1363 (Fed.
Cir. 1998). Before the Veterans Court, as elsewhere, a writ
of mandamus is regarded as a “drastic and extraordinary”
remedy, Lamb v. Principi, 284 F.3d 1378, 1382 (Fed. Cir.
2002) (citations omitted), that may issue “only when three
conditions are satisfied: (1) the petitioner must show a
‘clear and indisputable’ right to issuance of the writ under
the relevant substantive law, (2) the petitioner must have
‘no other adequate means’ to attain the desired relief, and
(3) ‘even if the first two prerequisites have been met, the
issuing court, in the exercise of its discretion, must be sat-
isfied that the writ is appropriate under the circum-
stances,’” Wolfe v. McDonough, 28 F.4th 1348, 1354 (Fed.
Cir. 2022) (citations omitted).
This court may review the Veterans Court’s decisions
applying the All Writs Act when those cases fall within this
court’s jurisdiction. Beasley v. Shinseki, 709 F.3d 1154,
1158 (Fed. Cir. 2013); Mote v. Wilkie, 976 F.3d 1337, 1340–
41 (Fed. Cir. 2020). We may not, however, review a Veter-
ans Court decision denying a mandamus petition unless
the request for a petition presents a “non-frivolous legal
question.” Beasley, 709 F.3d at 1158; see also Wright v. Col-
lins, 157 F.4th 1379, 1381 (Fed. Cir. 2025); Love v.
McDonough, 100 F.4th 1388, 1392 (Fed. Cir. 2024);
Beaudette v. McDonough, 93 F.4th 1361, 1366 (Fed. Cir.
2024); Wolfe, 28 F.4th at 1354.
In this case, the Veterans Court did not address the
merits of Mr. Collins’s claim, but instead ruled that his pe-
tition for mandamus did not describe “the precise relief
sought,” “the facts necessary to understand the issues pre-
sented,” or “whether he lacks adequate alternative means
to obtain relief.” S. App. 8. The court added that Mr.
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COLLINS v. COLLINS 5
Collins “provides no other facts necessary to understand
the underlying fee dispute; he has not shared whether he
sought relief for this issue at the Agency, let alone whether
he lacks alternative means to obtain relief; and he does not
otherwise explain what relief he seeks from this Court.” Id.
Based on those facial inadequacies in Mr. Collins’s re-
quest for the extraordinary relief of mandamus, the Veter-
ans Court found that he had failed to satisfy the minimum
pleading standards necessary to allow the court to deter-
mine whether extraordinary relief was warranted. Moreo-
ver, the court did not extinguish his claim altogether, but
instead dismissed the petition without prejudice to Mr. Col-
lins’s right to refile the petition with “the information and
documentation necessary to support entitlement to the re-
lief sought and for the Court to understand the issues pre-
sented.” Id.
The inadequacies of the petition, as summarized by the
court, make it clear that the claim raised by Mr. Collins, in
the form in which it was presented to the Veterans Court,
cannot be characterized as “non-frivolous.” The petition
not only failed to address the standards required to estab-
lish the right to mandamus relief but, more importantly, it
did not include information sufficient to enable the court to
evaluate the claim or determine whether the claim was
properly asserted against the agency or against Mr. Col-
lins’s previous counsel. And if the petition was meant to
allege liability on the part of the agency, it did not suggest
what theory of liability would support a claim of the sort
Mr. Collins appears to be asserting. Accordingly, we con-
clude that we lack jurisdiction over this appeal and are re-
quired to dismiss it.
DISMISSED
COSTS
No costs.
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