Court Opinion

ID: 9386335
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-04-12 13:00:28.896487+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:18:05.659425
License: Public Domain

USCA11 Case: 22-10462    Document: 37-1     Date Filed: 04/12/2023    Page: 1 of 7

                                                  [DO NOT PUBLISH]
                                   In the
                United States Court of Appeals
                        For the Eleventh Circuit

                          ____________________

                                No. 22-10462
                          Non-Argument Calendar
                          ____________________

       JEREMIAH WADE MCMULLINS,
                                                    Plaintiff - Appellant,

       versus

       SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION, COMMISSIONER,
                                        Defendant - Appellee.
                          ____________________

                 Appeal from the United States District Court
                    for the Northern District of Alabama
                    D.C. Docket No. 4:20-cv-00633-CLM
                          ____________________
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       2                      Opinion of the Court                 22-10462

       Before WILSON, GRANT, and LUCK, Circuit Judges.
       PER CURIAM:
              Jeremiah McMullins appeals his denial of disability insurance
       benefits and supplemental security income, which was
       subsequently affirmed at a Social Security Administration hearing
       and in the district court below. We too affirm the denial.
       McMullins has waived and forfeited all his arguments on appeal.
       Even if he had not, we would hold that the evidence was neither
       material nor chronologically relevant, which are each independent
       grounds for affirming.
                                         I.
              McMullins suffers from several mental health issues relating
       to bipolar disorder, agoraphobia, and obsessive-compulsive
       disorder. He stated that he has not held a paid position since 2010;
       instead, he cleans the house and cares for his children and pets as
       he is able. After a long history of trying to treat his conditions, he
       applied for both disability insurance benefits and supplemental
       security income in 2016, alleging that he became disabled on May
       1, 2014. The parties do not dispute that McMullins needs to show
       that he was disabled before December 31, 2014 to receive disability
       insurance benefits, and after his 2016 application to receive
       supplemental security income.
              After receiving a denial letter, McMullins requested and
       received a hearing before an administrative law judge. He heard
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       22-10462              Opinion of the Court                       3

       testimony from both McMullins and a vocational expert and
       consulted copious medical records. He determined in February
       2019 that while McMullins’s conditions were severe enough to
       disqualify him from any past relevant work, they had never risen
       to the level of the listed impairments, and jobs existed that could
       accommodate him. Because McMullins did not qualify as disabled,
       he was not eligible to receive benefits.
              Later, McMullins submitted additional evidence to the
       Social Security Administration’s Appeals Council. Relevant here
       are two sets of treatment notes. One is from Dr. Feist, who had
       seen McMullins on at least nine occasions between December 2014
       and the February 2019 hearing. Dr. Feist saw McMullins in April
       2019, adjusted his medication plan, and filled out a one-page
       preprinted questionnaire stating that several limitations on
       McMullins’s ability to work related back to May 1, 2014. The other
       set of notes is from Dr. Nichols in late 2019. She reached similar
       conclusions to Dr. Feist by filling out a similar form, but she did
       not review any medical records from 2010 through 2016. She had
       never previously interacted with McMullins.
              The Council denied McMullins’s request for appellate
       review, holding that this evidence was not chronologically
       relevant. McMullins appealed to the district court, which affirmed
       the denial of benefits. It noted that McMullins had forfeited any
       arguments that the additional evidence was material—and that
       even if he had not, the evidence was immaterial.
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       4                      Opinion of the Court                 22-10462

               McMullins timely appealed to this court. After filing his
       initial brief, McMullins’s counsel passed away. He retained new
       counsel to author his reply brief. While the initial brief advanced
       four arguments, the reply brief states that “THE ONLY ISSUE IS
       WHETHER THE APPEALS COUNCIL FAILED TO CONSIDER
       NEW EVIDENCE.”
                                        II.
              We have an obligation to review, de novo, whether
       evidence first presented to the Appeals Council is “new, material,
       and chronologically relevant.” Washington v. Soc. Sec. Admin.,
       Comm’r, 806 F.3d 1317, 1321 (11th Cir. 2015) (quotation omitted).
       If “the Appeals Council erroneously refuses to consider evidence,
       it commits legal error and remand is appropriate.” Id.
                                        III.
              Given the affirmative waivers in the reply brief, we consider
       only McMullins’s argument that the Appeals Council failed to
       consider his additional evidence. United States v. Campbell, 26
       F.4th 860, 871–72 (11th Cir. 2022).
              As Washington notes, the evidence must be new (that is, not
       cumulative), material, and chronologically relevant for the Appeals
       Council to consider it. Id. at 1320, 1321 n.6. But McMullins’s initial
       brief makes no arguments that the evidence is material—indeed, it
       quotes the district court’s holding that McMullins had forfeited his
       materiality arguments there through inaction. While these
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       22-10462               Opinion of the Court                         5

       arguments appear in the reply brief, that is too late according to
       our precedents. United States v. Levy, 379 F.3d 1241, 1244 (11th
       Cir. 2004). So we conclude that McMullins has forfeited or waived
       every issue on appeal, which is a sufficient reason to affirm.
              Even if McMullins’s initial brief had not forfeited this issue,
       we would still conclude that the additional evidence is immaterial.
       Washington, which McMullins relies heavily on, likewise involved
       two doctors’ post-hearing statements. One of them was excluded
       as the “portion of his questionnaire listing Mr. Washington’s
       symptoms and medications is cumulative because this evidence
       was already in the record.” Washington, 806 F.3d at 1323 n.9. The
       “only noncumulative information in the questionnaire is his
       opinion that Mr. Washington is disabled,” but “we are concerned
       with the doctors’ evaluations of the claimant’s condition and the
       medical consequences thereof, not their opinions of the legal
       consequences of his condition.” Id. (quotation omitted and
       alteration adopted).
              So too here. Another doctor at Dr. Feist’s clinic had already
       submitted an opinion questionnaire stating that McMullins was
       disabled, which the administrative law judge considered—and
       discarded—at the hearing given the weight of other medical
       evidence. As for Dr. Nichols, McMullins concedes that she did not
       consider records between 2010 and 2014 (when McMullins stopped
       working to when his insurance eligibility terminated), meaning her
       opinion is irrelevant to his disability insurance benefits claim. She
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       6                     Opinion of the Court               22-10462

       did consider medical evidence within the timeframe for his
       supplemental security income claim. But McMullins also concedes
       that she is an examining physician. Statements from examining
       physicians are afforded less weight than the treating physician
       evidence that the administrative law judge considered at the
       hearing. Id. at 1322 n.7. And an administrative law judge is “free
       to reject the opinion of any physician when the evidence supports
       a contrary conclusion”—particularly if they only offer
       impermissibly conclusory statements. Sryock v. Heckler, 764 F.2d
       834, 835 (11th Cir. 1985); see also Schink v. Comm’r of Soc. Sec.,
       935 F.3d 1245, 1260 (11th Cir. 2019).
              To be material, there must be a “reasonable probability”
       that evidence “would change the administrative results.”
       Washington, 806 F.3d at 1322. In Washington, one examining
       doctor’s word against another’s about whether an impairment was
       enough to automatically result in a disability created a material
       dispute. Id. at 1322. We simply do not have that situation here:
       the vocational expert’s testimony, alongside treating physician
       evidence (including past statements from Dr. Feist) each suggest
       that there were jobs in the national economy that McMullins could
       perform.
              And even if the evidence was material, it was not
       chronologically relevant. We have found chronological relevance
       when, for example, a petitioner presented post-hearing evidence of
       a pre-hearing surgery that was not previously considered. Pupo v.
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       22-10462               Opinion of the Court                        7

       Comm’r, Soc. Sec. Admin., 17 F.4th 1054, 1063 (11th Cir. 2021).
       And in Washington, we said that doctors who examined patients
       after the hearing could prepare chronologically relevant notes. 806
       F.3d at 1322–23. But we later limited “its holding to the specific
       circumstances” of that case—to wit, there must be “no evidence of
       the claimant’s mental decline since the ALJ’s decision.” Hargress
       v. Soc. Sec. Admin., Comm’r, 883 F.3d 1302, 1309 (11th Cir. 2018)
       (quotation omitted).
              Here, there is evidence that McMullins’s condition had
       declined by the time of Dr. Feist’s consultation with him (which
       preceded Dr. Nichols’s). For example, before the hearing
       McMullins expressly and repeatedly ruled out suicidal thoughts,
       but he reported them after the hearing. Because these post-hearing
       opinions are colored by the doctors’ post-hearing consideration of
       McMullins’s post-hearing mental health, they are not
       chronologically relevant. An opinion “one year later may be
       relevant to whether a deterioration in” a patient’s condition
       subsequently entitled him to benefits, but “it is simply not
       probative of any issue in this case.” Wilson v. Apfel, 179 F.3d 1276,
       1279 (11th Cir. 1999).
                                  *     *      *
              We AFFIRM the district court’s decision to affirm the Social
       Security Administration’s denial of benefits to McMullins.