Court Opinion

ID: 9480542
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:50:57.526324+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:47:45.059862
License: Public Domain

RYMER, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I dissent because I believe Willeford v. Secretary of Health & Human Services, 824 F.2d 771 (9th Cir.1987), should be followed in this case. In Willeford, the widow argued that the regulations permitted her to show, without any reference to the listing, that her condition precludes gainful activity. However we held that the regulations, statutory scheme and legislative history point in the other direction, requiring a widow to relate her condition to a listed impairment, at least in default of a compelling demonstration of the absence of ability to engage in gainful activity.
Ruff has not shown in such a compelling fashion that the listing is a “mechanical and unrealistic bar to a just determination,” id. at 773, nor is her condition comparable to the claimants’ condition in Tolany v. Heckler, 756 F.2d 268 (2d Cir.1985) (urinary stress, incontinence, and hypothyroidism, causing urination five to ten times per hour) or Paris v. Schweiker, 674 F.2d 707 (8th Cir.1982) (aggregate of impairments from Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, hernia, gallstones, diabetes, and leg ulcers precluded any gainful activity), cited by Willeford as examples of that kind of case. Therefore it seems to me unnecessary to call our prior precedent into ques*920tion and thus to adopt the Second and First Circuit approach.