Court Opinion

ID: 9473721
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:37:59.626364+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:43:42.266167
License: Public Domain

JOHN W. PECK, Senior Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
The AU who considered Price’s claim offered no analysis whatever to support his conclusion that Price is not disabled. Because the AU’s decision provides an insufficient basis for evaluation of the Secretary's denial of benefits, I respectfully dissent.
The AU’s discussion of the medical evidence, stated in full, is as follows:
EVALUATION OF THE EVIDENCE
Betty Price is the 51-year-old widow of Floyd B. Price who died fully insured on January 8, 1980. She has not remarried. She is overweight and has high blood pressure, a reducible ventral hernia, cystocele, cardiac decompensation, uterine prolapse. It is apparent that the conditions constitute a severe impairment, but the conditions, individually or in combination, do not meet or equal in severity the Secretary’s list of impairments.
AU’s decision at 3; Joint Appendix at 8. I most respectfully suggest that to say that these findings “could have been stated with more particularity,” as the majority does, is an understatement. They were stated with no particularity at all. It is impossible to determine from these findings why the AU did not believe that Price’s admittedly “severe” impairments did not, in combination, “equal in severity the Secretary’s list of impairments.”
The Seventh Circuit said, in Zblewski v. Schweiker, 732 F.2d 75 (1984):
It is more than merely “helpful” for the AU to articulate reasons (e.g., lack of credibility) for crediting or rejecting particular sources of evidence. It is absolutely essential for meaningful appellate review. As the Third Circuit put it in Cotter v. Harris, 642 F.2d 700, 705 (3d Cir.1981), when the AU fails to mention rejected evidence, “the reviewing court cannot tell if significant probative evidence was not credited or simply ignored.”
Zblewski, 732 F.2d at 79. The Sixth Circuit recently cited this language with approval in Hurst v. Secretary of HHS, 753 F.2d 517, 519 (1985).
If it is “absolutely essential” to appellate review for an AU to state his reasons for crediting particular evidence, it is still more essential that he articulate the reasons for his conclusions. Nor can the AU’s failure to offer any analysis for his conclusions be justified, as the majority suggests, because this case represents a claim by a widow rather than a wage earner. While it is true that different criteria are used to deter*285mine whether wage earners and widows are disabled, the AU’s denial of benefits did not rely on evidence that Price could perform gainful activity. It was based on the unsupported conclusion that her impairments, in combination, were not equal in severity to those contained in the listings. The distinction between the two standards thus is irrelevant to the AU’s failure to offer reasoning.
I believe that the rule stated in Zblewski and cited with approval in Hurst is an eminently sensible one. I would reverse and remand for the filing of findings sufficient to provide some basis for judicial review. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.