Cite as: 513 U. S. 115 (1994)
Opinion of the Court
of Veterans' Appeals denied Gardner's claim for benefits, on the ground that § 1151, as interpreted by 38 CFR § 3.358(c)(3) (1993), only covers an injury if it "proximately resulted [from] carelessness, negligence, lack of proper skill, error in judgment, or similar instances of indicated fault" on the part of the VA, or from the occurrence during treatment or rehabilitation of an "accident," defined as an "unforeseen, untoward" event. The Court of Veterans Appeals reversed, holding that § 1151 neither imposes nor authorizes adoption of the fault-or-accident requirement set out in § 3.358(c)(3), Gardner v. Derwinski, 1 Vet. App. 584 (1991), and the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed, 5 F. 3d 1456 (1993). We granted certiorari, 511 U. S. 1017, and now affirm.
II
Despite the absence from the statutory language of so much as a word about fault 2 on the part of the VA, the Government proposes two interpretations in attempting to reveal a fault requirement implicit in the text of § 1151, the first being that fault inheres in the concept of compensable "injury." We think that no such inference can be drawn in this instance, however. Even though "injury" can of course carry a fault connotation, see Webster's New International Dictionary 1280 (2d ed. 1957) (an "actionable wrong"), it just as certainly need not do so, see ibid. ("[d]amage or hurt done to or suffered by a person or thing"). The most, then, that the Government could claim on the basis of this term is the existence of an ambiguity to be resolved in favor of a fault requirement (assuming that such a resolution would be possi-2 "Fault" is shorthand for fault-or-accident, the test imposed by the regulation. Section 3.358(c)(3) leaves the additional burden imposed by the "accident" requirement unclear, defining the term to mean simply an "unforeseen, untoward" event. Although the appropriate scope of the "accident" requirement is not before us, on one plausible reading of the regulation some burden additional to the statutory obligation would be imposed as an alternative to fault.
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