continued to have attacks of precordial pains with elevated blood pressure readings with subsequent treatment for chest pains and cardiac disorders.

There is of record medical affidavits from 11 reputable, qualified physicians some of whom testify as to the existence of cardiac disability and hypertension even while on active duty. Dr. J. E. W. actually treated the man while aboard ship and found heart symptoms. There is an abundance of affidavit evidence, both medical and lay, attesting to the onset and development of the veteran's cardiovascular condition during and following World War II.

In an original decision of February 1959 and reconsideration decision of March 1960, the Board of Veterans Appeals has held that, despite the abundance of medical testimony and statements of friends. and associates plus a complete photographic description of war conditions undergone by the veteran, there is no basis to establish serviceconnection for cardiovascular disease which resulted in a true heart attack, diagnosed as myocardial infarction in 1952. The veteran has. otherwise furnished considerable evidence describing the Pacific Island on which he served and the special hardships and unusual circumstances of service which were conducive to producing cardiovascular disease. The Veterans' Administration has, in effect, determined that the original sypmptoms which began in service and which continued thereafter, were only symptoms of neuropsychiatric disease.

We are positive that, were the facts in evidence in this case presented to an impartial, unbiased judicial body, the benefit of doubt would most surely be resolved in this seriously disabled veteran's favor.

Mr. Chairman, that concludes our remarks, but I should like to add that I have not included either the names or the claim numbers in these individual cases inasmuch as that is confidential information: however, we will be glad to furnish the names and claim numbers to the committee on request.

Mr. QUIGLEY. Thank you, Mr. Cash. Do you have any other statements to submit from any of your other members?

Mr. FRIBLEY. Mr. Chairman, this concludes our statement for this morning.

Mr. QUIGLEY. I know you are in a hurry, and if you have to leave, say so, but I have a question that I would like to direct particularly toward Mr. Cash.

I notice you are acting national director of claims. How long have you served in this capacity?

Mr. CASH. Since December, and now approximately 5 months, sir. Mr. QUIGLEY. And before that were you involved in this or was this an entirely new assignment?

Mr. CASH. Before that I was the assistant national director of our claims service, for approximately 5 years.

Mr. QUIGLEY. All right; so you have a background in it, which is what I am looking for.

Now, how many claims did DAV handle before the Appeals Board on an average, yearly average?

Mr. CASH. The average, sir, over the past 10 years, would be about 5,000 cases per year.

Mr. QUIGLEY. About 5,000 cases. In your judgment, considering the 5 years you have been identified with it and if you were the counsel

making the decision, how many of those, on a yearly basis, would you take an appeal on?

Mr. CASH. You mean how many of those cases that have been appealed would I have personally taken an appeal?

Mr. QUIGLEY. In how many cases did you have unsatisfied clients, where you agree with them they should be unsatisfied, and where, if there was a further appeal step to be taken, you would have taken it?

Mr. CASH. That would be difficult to say, sir, exactly, except that we are constantly approached with requests from dissatisfied veterans who have had decisions made against them by the Board of Veterans Appeals, and it is on this basis that we conclude that some higher judicial review is necessary; but to give an exact number, I would not,

sir.

Mr. QUIGLEY. Could you give us an approximation? In other words, I am trying to figure out how busy this court would be, what its volume of work might be if it were permitted, or created by the Congress; that is, just from your 5,000 cases a year. Now, I recognize thre are other service organizations, and there are attorneys and veterans who handle their cases on their own, without taking advantage of the type of service you offer.

Mr. CASH. Well, our experience shows that of the 5,000 cases we are able to get favorable decisions in about 600, so that leaves 4,400 unfavorable appeals.

Mr. QUIGLEY. How many of that 5,000 on an average would go to a formal hearing?

Mr. CASH. A formal hearing before the Board of Veterans Appeals? Mr. QUIGLEY. Yes.

Mr. CASH. I would say less than 5 percent request and get a personal formal hearing before the Board.

Mr. QUIGLEY. Am I wrong in assuming that a formal hearing before the Board would almost be a prerequisite before going into a court, if we created a court?

Mr. CASH. In compiling a complete record, I would say perhaps so, sir.

Mr. QUIGLEY. In other words, I would assume that the average judge would be inclined to say you haven't exhausted your administrative remedies if you have not had a hearing before the Board itself and they decided against you. What I am trying to lead up to is this. I think this committee has two questions to decide: First, should there be one additional step in the appeals procedure which does not exist; and, if there should be, what form should it take?

The particular bill which your DAV is supporting, of course, proposes the creation of a separate court.

Mr. CASH. That one additional step you refer to is the formal hearing?

Mr. QUIGLEY. No; a court review.

Mr. CASH. A court review, an additional step beyond the Board of Veterans Appeals.

Mr. QUIGLEY. This is the first step this committee should decide: whether there should be a formal court of review of the decisions of the Veterans Appeals Board. If we decide in the affirmative on that, the next question is this: What court should do it? Should it be the Court of Claims? Should it be the existing district courts? Or

should it be as is suggested in H.R. 9591, a separate court to be created to be devoted exclusively to hearing and considering and disposing of veterans' appeals?

Mr. CASH. Well, sir, we endorse and support the court as envisioned in H.R. 9591, a separate court.

Mr. QUIGLEY. All right; I am particularly interested in knowing why, and ultimately I am going to ask you that if you could not get that separate court, would your organization feel it was a step forward or a step backward to assign this to some existing Federal court?

Mr. CASH. Well, I believe I will let Mr. Fribley, the national commander, answer that question, because it bears on the resolution. which came out of our national convention on this question.

Mr. FRIBLEY. Of course, as Mr. Cash has indicated, and as I have started already this morning, we are keenly interested in H.R. 9591. However, any improvement over the present system, we certainly would be happy to see come about. The mechanics of setting up a judicial court of review, I know, will be many, and it would take some time, and trial and error, but I feel that in the end, regardless of what method, anything that would be different from the present procedure would certainly be an improvement in regard to the veterans. Mr. QUIGLEY. Let me ask you more specifically: Why has the DAV, in this particular instance, urged creation of a separate court? What is your argument in favor of a separate court which would be known. as the U.S. Court of Veterans Appeals?

Mr. FRIBLEY. Well, as I understand your question, Mr. Chairman, as we see it, the present regular courts already have their dockets loaded, and this certainly would create an additional workload, and in the beginning I can envision that it will be a tremendous amount of work; therefore, that is one of the main reasons we feel that a separate court that would deal entirely with the veterans' claims and the decisions therefor, would be forthcoming quicker than it would be if you take the regular courts that we now have available.

Mr. QUIGLEY. I think you appreciate that one of the big arguments in this particular bill or the several bills that are like it, is that it proposes the creation of a new court which would have five judges and a chief judge, of course, so immediately, with just the judges' salaries alone, you are over the $100,000 a year bracket. This has nothing to do with the matter of providing them with a courthouse, with a bailiff, with a clerk, and with all the other paraphernalia that a court must have to function properly. In other words, we are dealing immediately with an expenditure, I suspect, in short order, which would run the best part of $300,000, and could even reach a half million dollars, without any effort at all.

I think the thing we have to keep in mind is whether we could use existing court facilities to do the same job and do it equally as well, for less expenditure.

Mr. FRIBLEY. I certainly realize it will take an additional amount of money, but when we are dealing with justice, I do not believe that anyone, especially in our great democracy, should tie a price tag on to justice itself. We all realize that in our judical system sometimes it might become expensive, but in the end, as long as the individual American has had his day in court, I do not believe that the monetary cost should be weighed as an element in making our determination on this point.

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However, I can see very well the Congressman's side of it. You are the keepers of the Treasury, the till, and you have to be aware of the many requests, and also at the same time do what you think might be best for the country; but in this regard, especially when we are dealing with justice, to me, personally, I can see no monetary difficulties in this measure.

Mr. QUIGLEY. All right, I appreciate your comment, and I think you appreciate the problem that is facing this committee.

Mr. FRIBLEY. I think I do.

Mr. QUIGLEY. The problem is: First, should we do something, and, if we should do something-what?

And your proposal, H.R. 9591, is just one of several approaches to this same basic problem.

Mr. FRIBLEY. I understand, Mr. Chairman, and, again, I want to state that I personally feel that any improvement over our present method would certainly be a step in the right direction.

Mr. QUIGLEY. I am not suggesting that yours might not be the best. The thought I have in the back of my mind is, of course, we might have, as we sometimes do in the Congress of the United States, to settle for something less than the best, in order to get something.

Mr. FRIBLEY. Yes.

Mr. Chairman, Mr. Freudenberger has a point he would like to make.

Mr. QUIGLEY. Mr. Freudenberger.

Mr. FREUDENBERGER. I would like to say this in regard to the question you asked: We feel that, if the Federal courts everywhere are thrown open to this type of litigation, those courts will not be particularly well versed in veterans legislation. Decisions will be made that are not uniform, in individual cases, whereas, if you have a special court, that court will be able to become thoroughly familiar with the veterans legislation and all the rules and regulations surrounding it, and can concentrate on that one type of case, the veterans cases, and we think that is a big advantage in having a special court, apart from the fact that you will badly congest the dockets of the other courts if you throw them open to this litigation.

Mr. QUIGLEY. Well, without going into the problem that is involved, the already badly congested Federal court dockets, I am not really so sure, as a lawyer, that I agree with the desirability of expertise in any narrow area with a judge. As a matter of fact, I think maybe your problem with the present Appeals Board is that it has become too expert, too specialized, too confined in its point of view.

We do not, for example, have a special veterans court to handle labor cases, and we do not have a special Federal court to handle negligence cases.

I think over a period of time particular judges, depending upon the nature of the assignment that is given to a judge by the chief judge, when he first goes on the bench, develops a certain expertness in the field and becomes recognized. I am really not so sure that a man with a good judicial background, looking at this thing not so much as an expert but as a judge, might not, in the final analysis, on the average, come up with a more judicial decision than a so-called expert. I think maybe one of the things you ought to get away from is having these problems determined finally by people who are confined to this field.

One of the things that bothers me about H.R. 9591 is that if this Court of Veterans Appeals was created it would have the final decision, which I think you will admit is somewhat unique in our judicial system.

Now, I agree that the decision has to stop somewhere; somebody eventually has to say, "This is it." Under the present setup, "This is it." is said by the Board, and that is it. Now, what you are suggesting is it should go one step further and the Court of Veterans Appeals should have the final say. Now, is there any reason why, if this court is created, it should be different from a district court or different from a Federal Court of Claims, where for good and valid reasons, any further appeal can be taken to the U.S. Supreme Court, or, rather, to the circuit court and eventually to the Supreme Court? Mr. FREUDENBERGER. Nothing, except the fact that it would have exclusive jurisdiction over a special certain kind of litigation.

Mr. QUIGLEY. Well, even if I were to concede the point for a moment, that it should have exclusive jurisdiction, the question is this: Should it have final jurisdiction, as well as exclusive, or are we in danger of running into the creation of this court which, over a period of 20 or 25 years, your successors in office might be back here appearing before our successors in office, and saying, "This U.S. Court of Veterans Appeals has to be changed."

It will be doing the same thing that a generation later is being done by the Board within the VA itself, and we will need a further appeal to the district court, the circuit court, or the U.S. Supreme Court? I am kind of thinking out loud here, and I do not know how valid my thoughts are.

Mr. FREUDENBERGER. I feel this way, Mr. Chairman; that if some. point arises during the case, which ordinarily in some other type of litigation would permit the person to take an appeal to a higher Federal court, the veteran should be permitted to do so.

Mr. QUIGLEY. All right; Mr. Saylor would like to comment. I am sorry you could not be here earlier, Mr. Saylor, but we will give you the field, anyway.

Mr. SAYLOR. I just want to comment, Mr. Quigley, that you are apparently ignoring a very, very modern trend of Congress in approaching these very special problems, because, as was discussed yesterday by the witnesses, the United States has set up a court for what was originally a Board of Tax Appeals, and now we have a Court of Tax Appeals.

We used to send all of the claims of the Indians into the respective district courts and into the Court of Claims. Congress realized that it took experts in these fields, so we have set up the Indian Claims. Commission, which handles these affairs, and just at the last session the Congress, taking a look at what was happening in our military and realizing that sometimes officers get carried away with their own importance in looking at cases, suddenly decided it was absolutely necessary for the protection of the men in the services to set up a civilian court of military appeals; so there is a great deal of precedent for setting up a specific court to handle specific types of cases.

That is true where there is a great volume of work, so that I would like to say that these are just some of the things that came to my mind while you were interrogating the witness.