Court Opinion

ID: 9482450
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:50:54.389675+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:00.424425
License: Public Domain

CHAPMAN, Senior Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I dissent and adopt the reasoning set forth in the original panel opinion found at 925 F.2d 769 (4th Cir.1991). I differ with *97the majority because I am convinced that 20 C.F.R. § 404.970 (1991) was adopted to provide an orderly and speedy disposition of social security claims and to discourage piecemeal litigation. By allowing the proceedings to be reopened and remanded for additional evidence, which is not really new, the majority is encouraging attorneys to hold back evidence and then seek remand for consideration of evidence that was available at the time of the AU hearing.
The record clearly shows that the claimant’s attorney had Dr. Liu’s latest medical opinion on May 2,1988. This was two days before the AU hearing was conducted on May 4,1988. The May 2,1988 letter of Dr. Liu is in the record and it makes no mention of the critical date of December 31, 1986. At this hearing, AU Lissner asked the claimant’s attorney to examine the AU record and satisfy himself that all treatment records were present. The AU also advised the attorney that he would be given time to submit any records that might be missing. A medical report from Dr. Eleanor Evans was submitted on May 12, 1988 by the claimant’s attorney, but in the transmittal letter accompanying this report there was no mention of Dr. Liu’s examination or a claim of an onset of disability prior to 1987.
On June 1, 1988, the AU rendered his opinion, and the claimant requested review on June 28, 1988 and attached a copy of a report from Dr. Liu dated June 16, 1988, which included the statement: “Judged from her history and the nature of illness, in my opinion, she was disabled as of at least December 31, 1986.”
This was not “new evidence.” The claimant’s attorney already had Dr. Liu’s letter of May 2, 1988, which expressed the doctor’s opinion as to the date of the onset of claimant’s impairment. Dr. Liu’s latest opinion was prepared after the AU hearing, after the claimant’s attorney was given the opportunity to and did submit additional medical reports, and after the AU’s opinion. The new medical report was designed purely and simply to fill in the gap in the claimant’s case — to prove that she was disabled while she was in an insured status — that is before December 31, 1986.
To encourage this type of supplement to the record, after the AU’s decision, is at odds with the intent of 20 C.F.R. § 404.970, which is an orderly and speedy disposition of claims. The law seeks certainty and repose and this is in keeping with the district court’s interpretation of the regulation — that a claimant must satisfy one of the conditions of subsection (a) before relief under subsection (b) may be pursued.
WILKINSON, Circuit Judge, joins in this dissenting opinion.