David S. Fritz v. Douglas A. Collins, Secretary of Veterans Affairs

N OTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.
United States Court of Appeals
for the Federal Circuit
______________________
DAVID S. FRITZ,
Claimant-Appellant
v.
DOUGLAS A. COLLINS, SECRETARY OF
VETERANS AFFAIRS,
Respondent-Appellee
______________________
2025-2076
______________________
Appeal from the United States Court of Appeals for
Veterans Claims in No. 24-5058, Judge Scott Laurer.
______________________
Decided: July 28, 2026
______________________
D AVID S. F RITZ, Gainesville, TX, pro se.
D ANIEL H OFFMAN, Commercial Litigation Branch, Civil
Division, United States Department of Justice, Washing-
ton, DC, for respondent-appellee. Also represented by
G EOFFREY M. L ONG , P ATRICIA M. MCC ARTHY , BRETT
SHUMATE; EVAN SCOTT G RANT , Y. K EN L EE , Office of Gen-
eral Counsel, United States Department of Veterans Af-
fairs, Washington, DC.
______________________
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FRITZ v. COLLINS 2
Before CHEN, HUGHES , and CUNNINGHAM , Circuit Judges.
P ER CURIAM .
David S. Fritz appeals the decision of the United
States Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims denying his
motion to supplement the pleadings and granting-in-part,
denying-in-part, and dismissing-in-part his petition for ex-
traordinary relief in the form of a writ of mandamus. For
the reasons below, we affirm-in-part and dismiss-in-part.
I
Mr. Fritz served in the U.S. Air Force from June 1991
to August 1998. In December 2024, Mr. Fritz filed an
amended petition1 with the Veterans Court for extraordi-
nary relief in the form of a writ of mandamus under the All
Writs Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1651. According to Mr. Fritz, the VA
and the Board of Veterans’ Appeals had failed to take re-
quired action on several of his claims for disability benefits.
Mr. Fritz therefore requested an order compelling the VA
to (1) decide pending service connection claims for chronic
fatigue syndrome (CFS) and hyperacusis, (2) schedule a
hearing with a Decision Review Officer (DRO) that he re-
quested in 1999, and (3) reconsider his past requests to ser-
vice connect more than 30 disabilities under 38 C.F.R.
§ 3.156(c). Mr. Fritz also requested an order instructing the
Board to decide his pending motions for reconsideration of
December 2018 and October 2022 Board decisions. In
June 2025, Mr. Fritz submitted additional materials di-
rectly to the Veterans Court, but the Veterans Court re-
turned the materials to Mr. Fritz, explaining that it does
1 Mr. Fritz submitted his first petition for extraordi-
nary relief pro se. The Veterans Court allowed him to
amend that petition with the benefit of counsel.
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FRITZ v. COLLINS 3
not accept submissions directly from represented claim-
ants. Mr. Fritz then moved to terminate his counsel and to
supplement his pleadings with additional argument.
In an August 2025 decision, the Veterans Court
granted Mr. Fritz’s motion to terminate his counsel; denied
his request to submit additional argument; and granted-in-
part, denied-in-part, and dismissed-in-part his mandamus
petition. The Veterans Court determined Mr. Fritz was en-
titled to a writ of mandamus as to his requests for orders
compelling (1) the VA to adjudicate his pending service
connection claims for CFS and hyperacusis, and (2) the
Board to decide his motion for reconsideration of an Octo-
ber 2022 Board decision. However, the Board (1) denied en-
titlement to a writ regarding his requests to compel the VA
to schedule a DRO hearing and generally reconsider his
claims pursuant to 38 C.F.R. § 3.156(c), and (2) dismissed
his request for an order compelling the Board to adjudicate
his pending motion for reconsideration of the Decem-
ber 2018 decision. Mr. Fritz timely appeals.
II
Our review of decisions by the Veterans Court is lim-
ited by statute. See Wanless v. Shinseki, 618 F.3d 1333,
1336 (Fed. Cir. 2010). While we may review the Veterans
Court’s decision regarding legal issues, we generally may
not review challenges to its factual determinations or its
application of law to the facts of a specific case. See
38 U.S.C. § 7292(a), (d).
We first address Mr. Fritz’s challenge to the Veterans
Court’s denial of his motion to supplement the pleadings.
Mr. Fritz appears to suggest the Veterans Court deprived
him of his due process rights by denying his request to sup-
plement the record. Mr. Fritz argues his counsel was inef-
fective and that this ineffective representation entitled him
to supplement the record to ensure his arguments were be-
fore the Veterans Court. We first note that the “Constitu-
tion does not guarantee effective representation of counsel
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FRITZ v. COLLINS 4
in connection with veterans’ benefits appeals before the
[Veterans Court].” Pitts v. Shinseki, 700 F.3d 1279, 1281
(Fed. Cir. 2012). Thus, to the extent Mr. Fritz argues his
attorney provided inadequate representation, which itself
deprived him of due process, that argument fails. Simi-
larly, the Veterans Court did not deprive Mr. Fritz of his
due process rights by denying his motion to supplement the
record. Due process requires notice and a meaningful op-
portunity to be heard; Mr. Fritz has had both. See
LaChance v. Erickson, 522 U.S. 262, 266 (1998). As the
Veterans Court noted, Mr. Fritz already had “two bites at
the petition process apple”—his initial pro se mandamus
petition and the amended petition submitted through coun-
sel—and he is free to pursue any new grounds for manda-
mus relief through a new petition. Fritz v. Collins, No. 24-
5058, 2025 WL 2222848, at *1 (Vet. App. Aug. 5, 2025) (De-
cision). We see no due process violation based on these facts
and therefore affirm the Veterans Court’s denial of
Mr. Fritz’s motion to supplement his pleadings.
We now turn to the merits of the Veterans Court’s man-
damus decision. Three conditions must be satisfied before
a court may grant mandamus relief: (1) the petitioner’s
right to the writ must be “clear and indisputable”; (2) the
petitioner must have “no other adequate means” to obtain
the desired relief; and (3) “the issuing court, in the exercise
of its discretion, must be satisfied that the writ is appropri-
ate under the circumstances.” Cheney v. U.S. Dist. Ct. for
D.C., 542 U.S. 367, 380–81 (2004) (cleaned up). “We may
not review the factual merits of the veteran’s claim, but we
may determine whether the petitioner has satisfied the le-
gal standard for issuing the writ.” Beasley v. Shinseki,
709 F.3d 1154, 1158 (Fed. Cir. 2013). We review the denial
of a petition for a writ of mandamus for abuse of discretion.
Lamb v. Principi, 284 F.3d 1378, 1384 (Fed. Cir. 2002).
Because Mr. Fritz’s appeal raises no non-frivolous legal
question bearing on the availability of a writ under the All
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FRITZ v. COLLINS 5
Writs Act, we dismiss for lack of jurisdiction.2 See Beasley,
709 F.3d at 1158. Nowhere does Mr. Fritz meaningfully al-
lege that the Veterans Court improperly interpreted a reg-
ulation, statute, or erroneously applied the mandamus
doctrine. Rather, his arguments on appeal reduce to a dis-
agreement with his underlying benefits awards, see Appel-
lant Br. 1 (“The claims readjudication was denied, but had
they been granted Mr. Fritz would have been required to
be rated at 10% per joint for arthritis . . . .”), or suggest the
Veterans Court failed to address certain of his arguments,
see id. at 1–2 (“The Court did not address the Secretary’s
failure to give constitutionally required notice . . . .”). But
Mr. Fritz’s underlying benefits claims were not the subject
of the decision on review and are thus not properly before
this court, and his arguments amount to a factual chal-
lenge that we lack jurisdiction to consider. See Lamb,
284 F.3d at 1381–82; Beasley, 709 F.3d at 1158. Further,
although Mr. Fritz purports to raise a constitutional due
2 To the extent Mr. Fritz appeals the Veterans
Court’s dismissal of his petition as it relates to his request
for an order compelling the Board to decide his pending mo-
tions for reconsideration of the Board’s December 2018 de-
cision, we dismiss any such challenge as moot. It is
apparent from Mr. Fritz’s July 7, 2026, filing that the
Board has since denied Mr. Fritz’s request for reconsidera-
tion of the December 2018 decision. See ECF No. 29; see
generally Fritz v. Collins, No. 25-6890, 2026 WL 1831177,
at *4 (Vet. App. June 25, 2026) (“Mr. Fritz filed a . . . mo-
tion for reconsideration of the December 2018 Board deci-
sion, and on July 24, 2025, the Board’s Acting Deputy Vice
Chairman denied the motion for reconsideration.”). Be-
cause he has received the relief his mandamus petition
sought—a decision on his pending motion for reconsidera-
tion—that portion of his petition and this appeal is moot.
See Mote v. Wilkie, 976 F.3d 1337, 1341 (Fed. Cir. 2020).
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FRITZ v. COLLINS 6
process issue in the Veterans Court’s alleged failure to con-
sider his notice argument, this again amounts to a disa-
greement with the application of the law to his case, and
his characterization of it “as constitutional in nature does
not confer upon us jurisdiction that we otherwise lack.” Flo-
res v. Nicholson, 476 F.3d 1379, 1382 (Fed. Cir. 2007) (cita-
tion omitted). The Veterans Court explicitly considered
Mr. Fritz’s argument that the VA failed to give constitu-
tionally required notice because it mailed official corre-
spondence to the purportedly wrong address, Decision,
2025 WL 2222848, at *3 (“He also argues that VA didn’t
give him proper notice when it issued the November 2000
Statement of the Case (SOC).”), yet it concluded he was
nonetheless not entitled to mandamus relief because he
could raise that issue in a substantive appeal to the Board.
Mr. Fritz has not explained how or why that conclusion
amounts to an abuse of discretion, and we conclude that it
does not raise an issue within our jurisdiction.
III
We have considered the parties’ remaining arguments
and find them unpersuasive. For the reasons above, we af-
firm-in-part and dismiss-in-part.
AFFIRMED-IN-PART, DISMISSED-IN-PART
COSTS
No costs.
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