Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-15-01444/USCOURTS-ca7-15-01444-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Carolyn W. Colvin
Appellee
William Price
Appellant

Document Text:

In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

No. 15-1444

WILLIAM PRICE,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

CAROLYN W. COLVIN, Acting Commissioner of Social

Security,

Defendant-Appellee.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Southern District of Illinois.

No. 13-cv-1160-CJP — Clifford J. Proud, Magistrate Judge.

____________________

ARGUED JULY 8, 2015— DECIDED JULY 24, 2015

____________________

Before POSNER, SYKES, and HAMILTON, Circuit Judges.

POSNER, Circuit Judge. Price, who appeals from the decision of the district court upholding the Social Security Administration’s 2013 denial of his claim for Supplemental Security Income (benefits for low-income people who are aged, 

blind or disabled, Browning v. Colvin, 766 F.3d 702, 703 (7th 

Cir. 2014)), is an almost illiterate, mentally retarded (“intelCase: 15-1444 Document: 18 Filed: 07/24/2015 Pages: 9
2 No. 15-1444

lectually disabled” is the currently favored term, id.) 44-yearold who also suffers from psychiatric ailments. It appears 

that between 1988 and 2010 he received SSI benefits intermittently, but the record does not indicate what the basis for adjudging him disabled was. In fact the record is a mess, which

does not reflect well on the Social Security Administration’s 

ability to maintain records. All we know, so far as the past is 

concerned, is that he was adjudged disabled in 1988, 1991, 

and 2007, and that his benefits should have been terminated 

in 2005 because that year he was sent to prison for a felony 

sex offense and imprisonment for a felony automatically 

terminates entitlement to disability benefits, 20 C.F.R. 

§ 404.468—a prison inmate doesn’t need an income. Yet how 

then to explain the third disability award, made in 2007 yet 

listing a termination date of 2006—and he was still in prison 

in 2007. The confusion is hopeless.

There is no suggestion that the award of benefits in 1988 

or 1991 was erroneous (and no explanation for why there 

were two awards) or that, had he not been sent to prison, his 

benefits might have been terminated on some other ground. 

This history creates a presumption that had it not been for 

his being sent to prison he would still be receiving the benefits stream that began in 1988.

Paroled in 2010, he forthwith applied for the same benefits that he had received before he entered prison, and being 

turned down sought judicial relief, culminating in his appeal 

to us.

Since his release from prison he has been under the care 

of a psychiatrist named Elbert Lee, who has diagnosed him

with a major depressive disorder and antisocial personality 

disorder and has prescribed antidepressant and antipsychotCase: 15-1444 Document: 18 Filed: 07/24/2015 Pages: 9
No. 15-1444 3

ic medicine to treat these conditions. Price has told Dr. Lee 

that he’s afraid of people and hears voices telling him that 

he’s no good. Two psychologists after examining Price’s file

concluded that he takes great pains to avoid people (an example being that he shops for groceries at 1:00 a.m.), has 

made only a marginal adjustment to adult life, has a chronic 

mood disorder that manifests itself in depression, also has

an anxiety disorder, an antisocial personality disorder and a 

learning disability, and his intellectual abilities are very 

modest—his only IQ score in the record is 65; an IQ below 70 

is in the retarded zone. To top it all off he has an adjustment 

disorder (basically, going to pieces under stress). Yet the two 

psychologists thought that despite Price’s mental and psychiatric problems he is capable of work-related activity. One 

said he can follow simple, repetitive instructions but would 

have difficulty with persistence in the workplace, the other

that his mental capacity is equal to performing simple tasks. 

A third psychologist agreed with the other two. All three are 

retained by the Social Security Administration to determine 

whether an applicant for benefits has mental problems. Only 

one of the three examined Price, however.

The month after the psychologists’ evaluation, Price may 

have tried to kill himself by overdosing on his antipsychotic 

medication. He said he wasn’t trying to kill himself—that 

“he was having problems with sleep and he took too many 

to get sleep.” But in the emergency room, to which he was 

taken to deal with the overdose, his (future) wife (at the time 

his girlfriend) said he’d told her it was a suicide attempt, 

and he was admitted to the hospital involuntarily. Dr. Lee, 

concerned with Price’s condition, prescribed a variety of 

medications to treat his complaints of depression, paranoia, 

sleep problems, and hearing voices and thumping noises. 

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Attending counseling sessions at a behavioral health center, 

Price reported hearing voices (again), worrying that people 

would hurt him, and feeling like “less than a man” because 

he had “difficulty finding a job due to his criminal background and parole status.” One of the counselors noted 

Price’s “lack of motivation and hope, being tearful, [and] 

changes in sleeping and eating patterns.”

Price had two more relapses after his may-have-been attempted suicide. Reacting to a threat by his wife (who also 

has mental illness, is described in the record as “mentally 

unstable,” and like her husband has a criminal record) to 

leave him, he asked the counselor for “crisis intervention” 

and expressed “an overwhelming fear of what would happen to him.” Several months later he called the police after 

arguing with his wife and asked to be taken to a hospital 

emergency room; they obliged him, but he was quickly discharged with instructions to see Dr. Lee.

Price made some progress toward minimal normality as 

a result of the medications that Dr. Lee prescribed for him. 

But Lee described the three relapses of the preceding year 

(mainly 2011) as “mental breakdowns” and opined that 

Price’s mental problems would make him miss an average of 

three days a month from work were he employed—which 

would (the vocational expert at Price’s hearing testified) disqualify him from gainful employment.

In counseling, Price reported having difficulty adjusting 

to life outside of prison—he said he’d been comfortable in 

prison because he had had a cell to himself and therefore 

hadn’t had to interact with other people—and also reported 

leaving a Wal-Mart in which he was shopping “because he 

felt someone was going to hurt him there.” A counselor who 

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No. 15-1444 5

is certified as a qualified mental health professional (like the 

counselor we mentioned earlier) noted Price’s self-reported 

rating of the severity of his symptoms of mental disorder as 

9.5 to 10 out of 10, which if accurate would tend to confirm 

the accuracy of the diagnoses of major depression, adjustment disorder compounded by anxiety and depression, and 

a learning disorder (presumably related to Price’s very low 

IQ).

In the spring of the following year, 2012, Price had a 

fourth breakdown: after again arguing with his wife, he was 

found walking on the side of a highway. This dangerous activity somehow violated the terms of his parole, but although his parole officer reported that the violation was not 

serious enough to warrant revoking parole he had Price 

jailed for the next ten months “for [Price’s] own well-being” 

because of his mental instability. Price didn’t object to being 

jailed. He said: “I don’t think I’ll have any problems handling being here.”

The acronym GAF (“Global Assessment of Functioning”) 

refers to a scale of 1 to 100 used by mental health clinicians 

and physicians to help determine how well a person is doing 

in adjusting to the psychological and other challenges of living; the higher the score, the better he’s doing. Criticized for 

subjectivity, the GAF is no longer widely used by psychiatrists and psychologists, but it was still in common use and 

frequently referred to in social security disability hearings

during the period between Price’s release from prison on parole in 2010 and his hearing before the administrative law 

judge in 2013, and the judge recited Price’s scores. Remarkably, it may seem, when he was not in prison or jail his GAF

scores were low (below 50), indicating poor adjustment. But 

Case: 15-1444 Document: 18 Filed: 07/24/2015 Pages: 9
6 No. 15-1444

when he was jailed after the walk along the highway, his 

scores soared into the 50 to 68 range, which signifies only

moderate difficulty in social or occupational functioning. 

This peculiar-seeming pattern was, however, consistent with 

Price’s antisocial personality (and with his insouciance—

another manifestation of that personality—about being jailed 

for the trivial parole violation), since jail or prison requires 

minimum socializing. After his release from jail his GAF 

score quickly plummeted to 33. A counselor noted that Price 

was withdrawn, made poor eye contact, and experienced 

hallucinations and paranoid delusions, and concluded that 

Price was schizophrenic and his intellectual functioning 

borderline.

One would think that such a combination of intellectual 

inadequacy and psychiatric abnormality would render a 

person incapable of gainful employment, and therefore totally disabled within the meaning of the social security disability statute and regulations. The administrative law judge, 

however, seconded by the magistrate judge, ruled that Price 

was not disabled. But the reasons they gave are unconvincing.

Cherry picking Price’s GAF scores, the administrative 

law judge zeroed in on his scores between 50 and 68 and 

concluded that they showed that Price was recovering from 

his various mental ailments. The judge overlooked the fact

that the high scores, because attributable to Price’s being in 

jail, reinforced rather than undermined the diagnoses of antisocial personality disorder and paranoia. The judge ignored the plunge in Price’s GAF score to 33 after Price was 

released from jail, where he had felt safe (a symptom of his 

antisocial personality disorder), and discredited Dr. Lee’s 

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No. 15-1444 7

testimony on the ground that it was based on what Price had 

told him—and how could Price (whom the judge on scanty 

evidence described as “manipulative”) be trusted? But psychiatric assessments normally are based primarily on what 

the patient tells the psychiatrist, so that if the judge were 

correct, most psychiatric evidence would be totally excluded 

from social security disability proceedings—a position we 

rejected in Adaire v. Colvin, 778 F.3d 685, 688 (7th Cir. 2015). 

Dr. Lee is reputable and based his testimony on Price’s 23 

visits to him over the course of two years. His professional 

training and experience would have taught him how to discount exaggerated statements by his patients.

The administrative law judge also discredited Dr. Lee’s 

opinion on the ground that Lee’s records showed that Price 

had improved with medication but that his opinion of 

Price’s mental state failed to acknowledge those improvements. But Price’s breakdowns during the course of his 

treatment by Dr. Lee were evidence that he did not improve 

significantly with medication.

Similarly off center was the administrative law judge’s 

remark that “there is little evidence in the record from treating sources” to support Price’s testimony that he has difficulty sleeping at night and as a result sleeps a great deal during the day. Price complained to Dr. Lee that he sleeps during the day, that his sleep cycle is reversed, and that his 

medication does not help him sleep; Dr. Lee believed him, 

and the administrative law judge had no reason to disbelieve 

him.

As is common in social security disability proceedings, 

the administrative law judge inferred from Price’s ability to 

perform simple household chores, such as cooking food in a 

Case: 15-1444 Document: 18 Filed: 07/24/2015 Pages: 9
8 No. 15-1444

microwave oven and mowing the lawn, that he could be 

gainfully employed. We’ve criticized casual inferences of 

ability to engage in gainful employment from ability to perform simple household chores, Hughes v. Astrue, 705 F.3d 

276, 278–79 (7th Cir. 2013), noting that it’s easier—especially 

for someone with an antisocial psychiatric disorder—to 

work in one’s own home, at one’s own pace, at one’s own 

choice of tasks, than to work by the clock under supervision 

in a place of business. Moreover, one of the counselors rated 

Price’s ability to prepare food and clean the house as “severely impaired” and another noted that Price’s auditory 

hallucinations “interfere with his daily life and routine.” Unsurprisingly, there is no evidence that he ever held a job

when he was in prison or jail, and it has been many years 

since he had even sporadic employment.

The administrative law judge used Price's denial that he 

had overdosed in an attempt to kill himself as a reason to 

discredit him. Although attempted suicide by overdose is 

often a cry for help rather than a serious attempt to kill oneself, the fact that one overdoses on pills for reasons other 

than to kill oneself is not proof of mental stability, as the 

judge seemed to think. He also thought it telling evidence 

against Price that he’d sought psychiatric treatment “in part, 

to get help in getting disability [benefits].” There is nothing 

wrong with seeking such benefits, and when the benefits 

sought are for a psychiatric disability the applicant must visit 

psychiatrists or other mental health experts in order to build 

a case for benefits.

And finally the administrative law judge improperly belittled the gravity of Price’s aversion to social interaction as a 

“not unreasonable” response to his spell on house arrest and 

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No. 15-1444 9

his being a sex offender. But house arrest cannot explain his 

decision to shop for groceries at 1:00 a.m. in order to avoid 

people, when he had been given permission to shop for groceries at any time of the day. And being a sex offender does 

not explain why Price suffered from auditory hallucinations 

before he was convicted of a sex offense.

The magistrate judge essentially just summarized the 

administrative law judge’s findings, but made an unforced 

error when he said that the administrative law judge’s “detailed discussion of Dr. Lee’s records” included a reference 

to a statement by Dr. Lee “that plaintiff had three episodes 

of decompensation [mental breakdown] in the last fourteen 

months, an assertion which is clearly not supported by his records” (emphasis added). No, the records report the three 

breakdowns, which are three of the four that we noted earlier in this opinion. What the administrative law judge had

said was that Dr. Lee’s records did not show repeated and

extended episodes of decompensation that would lead to an 

automatic finding of disability. He rightly did not cite this as 

a basis for giving Dr. Lee’s opinion little weight, because the 

form that Lee had filled out concerning Price’s condition

asked just for the number of episodes of decompensation, 

not how long they lasted.

The unavoidable conclusion is that the judgment of the 

district court must be and it therefore is reversed with directions to remand the case to the Social Security Administration for reconsideration of its denial of SSI benefits to Price.

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