Court Opinion

ID: 9467287
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 01:44:25.683005+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:40:16.442980
License: Public Domain

VAN DUSEN, Senior Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I respectfully disagree with the point of view taken in part III of the majority opinion because I believe the right of cross-examination of the experts, whose medical reports are offered in cases such as this, is more important than is stated in the majority opinion, which suggests that the employer had an obligation to tell the claimant how to prove her case inexpensively by sending notice of doctors’ reports that should be attested if the claimant wished to impose on the employer the burden and cost of producing such experts so that he may cross-examine them. See 20 C.F.R. § 725.464(c) (1978), which provided at the time of the administrative hearing in this case that the claimant will not be relieved of the cost of producing an expert for cross-examination unless his or her report was offered in attested form.1
Contrary to the implication of the majority opinion on page 211, the cross-examination issue seems to me to have been vitally connected with the unattestation issue. Since the reports were unattested, under the regulations the claimant was required to pay for the costs of producing their authors for cross-examination, so that the employer came to the hearing justifiably relying on the expectation that the experts making the unattested reports would be present for cross-examination if his or her report was to be given weight.2 None of *213the experts was present and a letter subsequent to the hearing from the hearing officer asked the employer’s counsel to specify which of the authors of these reports he wished to cross-examine. At the least, it would have been appropriate for the hearing officer to have asked the claimant’s attorney for some explanation of why the reports had been submitted in unattested form, in view of the absence of the experts from the hearing, since the majority concedes (page 211 of opinion) that these medical reports “were essential to the Board’s finding that there was adequate substantive evidence to validate respondent’s claim.”
In my view the preferable course would have been to remand this case to the Benefits Review Board for re-review, with directions (a) to give the parties an opportunity to present argument on whether the regulation (29 C.F.R. § 725.464(c) (1978)) or the present amended regulation (20 C.F.R. § 725.459(b) (1980)), which does not require such attestation for admissibility in evidence, would apply on rehearing; and (b) if the 1978 regulation is applicable, for remand to the administrative hearing officer for such rehearing.3
I believe the foregoing is the focus of the petitioner’s argument in its letter of March 2, 1978, to the hearing officer (Exhibit BB to its brief) and at pages 15 ff. of its brief filed in this court in support of its petition for review.
However, the determination of whether fundamental fairness was granted the employer by giving it after the hearing the opportunity to specify the experts it wished to cross-examine is a close one. Hence I join in the judgment of the majority.

. Approximately 10 unattested medical reports were received in evidence in this case.

. See Goldberg v. Kelly, 397 U.S. 254, 269-70, 90 S.Ct. 1011, 1021, 25 L.Ed.2d 287 (1970), where the Court said:
*213“In almost every setting where important decisions turn on questions of fact, due process requires an opportunity to confront and cross-examine adverse witnesses. E. g., ICC v. Louisville & N. R. Co., 227 U.S. 88, 93-94, 33 S.Ct. 185, 187-188, 57 L.Ed. 431 (1913); Willner v. Committee on Character & Fitness, 373 U.S. 96, 103-104, 83 S.Ct. 1175, 1180, 10 L.Ed.2d 224 (1963). What we said in Greene v. McElroy, 360 U.S. 474, 496-497, 79 S.Ct. 1400, 1413, 3 L.Ed.2d 1377 (1959), is particularly pertinent here:
‘Certain principles have remained relatively immutable in our jurisprudence. One of these is that where governmental action seriously injures an individual, and the reasonableness of the action depends on fact findings, the evidence used to prove the Government’s case must be disclosed to the individual so that he has an opportunity to show that it is untrue.... This Court has been zealous to protect these rights from erosion. It has spoken out not only in criminal cases, . . . but also in all types of cases where administrative ... actions were under scrutiny.’
“Welfare recipients must therefore be given an opportunity to confront and cross-examine the witnesses relied on by the department.”

. I believe the Board did not have the authority to, or intend to, decide this issue by its comment in note 2 of its opinion (246A) on mootness when the parties had not had the opportunity to present argument on the point. See part IV of the majority opinion.