Court Opinion

ID: 9466193
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 01:07:51.897026+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:39:35.666479
License: Public Domain

ENGEL, Circuit Judge,
dissenting. I respectfully dissent.
For all practical purposes the majority would amend 20 C.F.R. § 404.705(a) to delete therefrom the term “unexplainedly”.
The findings of the Secretary are, in my opinion, supported by substantial evidence and they should, therefore, be conclusive as contemplated by the statute. Danny Ross’ disappearance was very explainable indeed. If anything, the facts cited in the majority opinion here are stronger than those which brought about our affirmance of the Secretary’s decision in Dowell v. Gardner (Secretary of HEW), 386 F.2d 809 (6th Cir. 1967), cited by the majority. There is even more.
It must be remembered in the first instance, as the Appeals Council found, that Geraldine Johnson’s testimony before the Administrative Law Judge was heavily discredited by the record in the divorce proceedings which she instituted several years after Danny Ross disappeared. While she testified before the Administrative Law Judge that she and Danny had parted on good terms and that he dearly loved the baby, her petition for divorce and supporting documents showed precisely the opposite:
The defendant has habitually behaved toward me . . .in such a cruel and inhuman manner as to indicate a settled aversion to me . ... The last time I saw the defendant was when our baby was two weeks old and he was home on leave from the U.S. Army. ... He left to go back to Washington, D.C. and left without saying a word to either me or showing any fatherly affection toward our newborn daughter. My grandfather told me that I was in the hospital having our baby and he was staying at a house of 111 Repute. One of the ladies that was employed there came by my grandfathers home and told him the defendant was suppose to sent for her. . . . The defendant has mistreated me in the past. He was drinking and he choked me. His first sergeant pulled him off of me. I guess he would have killed me if it had not been for this man being with him. The defendant has been gone for over three years and has made no attempt to see our baby. Even his parents have never seen our child, since she was three months of age. ... I had to write the Commanding officer in order to get support in 1965 as he was gone for 7 months and I did not have any money at all.
Further, an affidavit of one Rose Bowles submitted with the petition for divorce and included in the record before the Secretary, corroborated Mrs. Johnson’s statements and observed that “The defendant did not pay any attention to their newborn baby.” It is indeed unfortunate, but Ross’ utter indifference to his family is firmly a matter of record.
Contrary to Mrs. Johnson’s assertion in her testimony at the hearing, there is no support for the fact that Ross was a “mama’s boy” whose failure to contact his parents indicated his possible death. In answer to inquiries made of the parents, Curtis and Opal Ross, they stated that they had not seen him since November, 1963, although he is known to have been alive and in the United States as late as February 14, 1966. Further, in answer to inquiries made on March 9, 1973, Curtis Ross answered: “Unknown” to the question “Do you believe that the missing person is dead?” In a statement dated July 30, 1973, Mrs. Opal N. Ross, also answered, “Unknown” to that question.
*1185Confirmation that the claimant herself may very well believe that Danny Ross still lives is found in the record, albeit indirectly. During the course of a colloquy between herself, the Administrative Law Judge and her attorney, Mrs. Ross, in what was obviously a slip-up, observed concerning her husband,
He doesn’t even know that I’m divorced, I don’t guess.
This tendency to deal with him as presently living is not isolated. Thus, in her divorce proceedings, Geraldine was even willing to swear under oath on September 15, 1969, that:
The defendant is now in the army and-has been during the pendency of this action.
Likewise, the further affidavits of Mrs. Johnson and of Rose Bowles all refer to the defendant in the present tense. Mrs. Johnson, while indicating her surprise that Ross had not contacted his parents, at the same time with some candor admitted at the hearing that Ross’ mother “wouldn’t turn him in if he was on AWOL. He knows that.” Admittedly these are not controlling circumstances, but they are part of the overall proof which strikes me as a classic example of the kind of “substantial evidence” required to support the Secretary’s decision and to shield that decision from judicial disagreement.
Finally, the majority’s observation, from Christen v. Secretary of HEW, 439 F.2d 715 (9th Cir. 1971), that “We cannot go along with the Department’s apparent view that one achieves immortality by disappearing under circumstances not free from doubt” is not valid here. The Secretary expressly found that at the time of his disappearance, Danny Ross was 28 years of age and apparently in good health. He would only have been 37 years old at the time of the Appeals Council decision of the case, and this was as it observed “Well within a normal lifespan.” Danny Ross does not have to be immortal to be alive under such circumstances.
I see nothing about the rule nor about the Secretary’s application of it to the facts here to suggest that his action is tantamount to transforming the presumption of death into a presumption of eternal life. On the contrary, it is a realistic and straightforward application of rules of evidence in a determination which Congress has left to the Secretary and in which our role of review has been intentionally limited by Congress.