Court Opinion

ID: 9481439
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:18:59.26734+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:48:19.032743
License: Public Domain

ARNOLD, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I agree with the Court that the present record contains sufficient evidence to justify the AU’s finding of no disability. I also agree that the motion to remand was properly denied, insofar as it rested on evidence that existed before the hearing. Finally, I fully concur in that portion of the Court’s opinion which rejects the claimant’s due-process argument. Thus, I join parts IIA, IIB(l), and IIC of the Court’s opinion.
With respect to part IIB(2), however, I respectfully dissent. In my view, it was an abuse of discretion not to remand the case for further consideration at the administrative level of the claimant’s heart attack and evidence relating to it. I cannot agree with the Court’s position, ante, at 260, that this evidence was irrelevant. In the first place, the human body is a unified whole, and any event as serious as a heart attack will often be connected, in some way or other, to other serious impairments from which the patient was already suffering. Second, and more specifically, one of the impairments that Thomas claimed at the time of his hearing before the AU was hypertension. He also testified that he was suffering from diabetes. His subsequent heart attack could well be persuasive evidence of the severity of these conditions. It is perfectly true that the ultimate question is whether Thomas was disabled at the earlier time asserted in his request for disability benefits. Subsequent events, however, often throw light on the significance of present or past conditions. It is likely that this is the case here, and I therefore respectfully disagree with the conclusion that the new evidence, the occurrence of a heart attack, did not relate to the impairments earlier claimed.
The Court says that Thomas can now commence a new disability proceeding, at which all of the evidence, including the occurrence of the heart attack, can be considered. It seems very likely that he is now disabled, and the only issue in this new proceeding would, probably, be the fixing of the proper onset date. In my view, a remand for consideration in the context of a record already made is much preferable to requiring that an entirely new administrative proceeding be commenced. Such proceedings in the Department of Health and Human Services have been known to drag on for years, and it is in everyone’s interest that a prompt decision one way or the other be reached in this case.
To the extent that this Court approves the District Court’s complete denial of the motion to remand, I respectfully dissent.