Opinion ID: 781387
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Interpreting the Evidence of Mental Impairment

Text: 38 The district court properly recognized that Byam presented evidence of personality and affective disorders, dissociative presentation, and depression. However, in its due process inquiry, the district court relied upon evaluations that assessed Byam's mental state in the context of her employability, rather than of her ability to act upon legal notice. The district court cited Dr. Hurley's observation that Byam was not significantly limited in understanding and carrying out simple instructions and in similar areas, and that she was moderately limited in her ability to understand, remember, and carry out detailed instructions. Those observations were contained in Dr. Hurley's MRFCA as a part of Byam's 1994 application. The MRFCA evaluates mental health in the context of the normal workday and workweek, and the Psyschiatric Review Techniques completed by Dr. Frommelt and Dr. Hurley also evaluate the individual in an employment context. 39 The district court also cited the ALJ's finding that the claimant was disabled as of June 1996. But the ALJ's decision not to reopen the earlier applications also was based on findings that focused on employability within the framework of the SSI regulations. Although the fault prong of 20 C.F.R. § 416.1488(c) empowers an ALJ to consider reopening past applications by evaluating whether a claimant was too impaired to comprehend notice, the ALJ never engaged in any fact-finding or analysis in this area. The ALJ's conclusion that Byam was disabled as of June 21, 1996 reflected the date she filed her application, and not a judgment about her mental state before 1996. Indeed, the Commissioner, in arguing that the ALJ did not constructively reopen the earlier applications, concedes that the ALJ did not review the merits of Byam's pre-1996 evidence of disability. 40 We think that the district court's reliance on Dr. Hurley's evaluation and on the ALJ's findings in rejecting Byam's due process claims was misguided. The question was not whether Byam could understand and act upon instructions in the context of certain jobs, but whether she was impaired in her ability to understand and pursue administrative and legal procedures. Moderate limitations in an employment context may be severe ones in understanding legal notice and filing requests for administrative and judicial review. Depression and social phobia might not prevent one from holding certain jobs, but they may impede one's ability to act on notice or go to a hearing. We do not think that employment assessments such as Dr. Hurley's are irrelevant to this question; indeed, they may be helpful to a fact-finder evaluating a due process claim, but they are neither sufficient nor dispositive. Dr. Hurley's findings in 1994 of moderate limitations in all four evaluation categories (understanding and memory, sustained concentration and persistence, social interaction, and adaptation) leave open questions about Byam's ability to comprehend and act upon notice in her earlier applications. 41 The district court noted that Dr. Nepveu's 1998 letter makes a strong case for establishing that the claimant was so severely disabled that she could not comprehend the administrative process, but concluded that Dr. Nepveu's observations in 1998 had no relevance to the claimant's state of mind from 1993 to 1996. However, we have held that while a treating physician's retrospective diagnosis is not conclusive, it is entitled to controlling weight unless it is contradicted by other medical evidence or overwhelmingly compelling non-medical evidence. Rivera v. Sullivan, 923 F.2d 964, 968 (2d Cir.1991); see also Wagner v. Sec'y of Health and Human Servs., 906 F.2d 856, 862 (2d Cir. 1990). In determining the appropriateness of summary judgment for the Commissioner, Dr. Nepveu's evaluation should be viewed in the light most favorable to Byam. So interpreted, Dr. Nepveu's diagnosis bears retrospectively on Byam's condition at earlier times, particularly in her diagnosis of life[-]long dysfunction, borderline mental retardation, PTSD, and personality disorders. The earlier contemporaneous evaluations do not appear to contradict Dr. Nepveu's diagnoses, and in fact, in some of their aspects, tend to support them. We do not rule out the possibility that the plaintiff's condition may have degenerated from 1993 to 1997-98, raising a concern about the retrospective accuracy of Dr. Nepveu's evaluation. However, in other cases of degenerative conditions and speculative retrospective diagnoses, plaintiffs have won reversals of adverse decisions. Rivera, 923 F.2d at 968 (citing Wagner, 906 F.2d. at 861). We do not forecast the outcome here in concluding that plaintiff has put forth sufficient evidence to warrant consideration of her due process claim. 42 Finally, we turn to whether Byam has satisfied Stieberger 's requirement of a particularized allegation of mental impairment plausibly of sufficient severity to impair comprehension, Stieberger, 134 F.3d at 40-41, and easily find that she has. There is record evidence of Byam's long history of depression, suicidal ideation with specific suicide attempts, and numerous evaluations around the dates of her SSI applications documenting specific mental disorders and cognitive, social, and emotional impairments. This evidence is sufficiently particularized and severe to meet Stieberger 's threshold allegation requirement and to answer the Commissioner's motion for summary judgment.