Court Opinion

ID: 9475831
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:39:28.154931+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:44:57.774901
License: Public Domain

NORRIS, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
In 1981, an Administrative Law Judge concluded that Campbell was entitled to benefits under the Black Lung Benefits Act. In the course of his decision, the Administrative Law Judge determined that Campbell was entitled to the interim presumption of total disability due to pneumoconiosis, in view of his having been engaged in coal mine employment for a least ten years and the presence of a qualifying ventilatory study. See 20 C.F.R. 727.203(a). In addition, he concluded that the employer had failed to rebut the presumption by any of the four methods provided for by 20 C.F.R. 727.203(b).
On appeal, the Benefits Review Board agreed that the presumption had been invoked and had not been rebutted by any of the first three methods, but remanded the matter to the Administrative Law Judge to reconsider, under the fourth method, the rebuttal evidence presented by the employer in an effort to establish that Campbell did not have pneumoconiosis. 20 C.F.R. 727.203(b)(4).
Upon remand, the Administrative Law Judge reconsidered the evidence and concluded that the employer had rebutted the presumption and denied benefits. The Benefits Review Board affirmed.
The Benefits Review Board noted that the Administrative Law Judge found the report of Dr. C. Ludwig Anderson to be unpersuasive for two reasons — that the doctor had not had the benefit of the later *305ventilatory function study, and that his opinion stated his belief that Campbell’s lung disease may have been due to his former cigarette habit. The essence of the Benefits Review Board’s concern, then, in remanding the case, was that the Administrative Law Judge had applied incorrect methodology in evaluating the weight to be attached to Dr. Anderson’s report in determining whether it established that Campbell did not have pneumoconiosis.
The effect of the remand was to require the Administrative Law Judge to consider the report of Dr. Anderson in its entirety, as opposed to rejecting it outright because the Administrative Law Judge had reservations about several aspects of the report— that the doctor had speculated that Mr. Campbell’s obstructive lung disease “may well be due to his long standing cigarette habit which ended in 1965,” and his not having had the benefit of the later ventilatory study. The board did not tell the Administrative Law Judge to arrive at a specific factual conclusion upon remand; instead, it simply instructed the Administrative Law Judge to view the evidence in the proper legal context.
The Administrative Law Judge would have been warranted in rejecting Dr. Anderson’s statement concerning cigarette smoking as the cause of Campbell’s lung disease, because of the speculative language in which it was couched. However, as the board noted, rejection of this portion of the opinion, and presence of a later ventilatory study which might have affected the doctor’s opinion as to the degree of Campbell’s impairment, did not warrant the Administrative Law Judge’s rejection, without discussion, of the other predicates for Dr. Anderson’s opinion that Campbell did not have pneumoconiosis.
It is apparent that the Administrative Law Judge, in reconsidering Dr. Anderson’s opinion upon remand, concluded that he had improperly discounted the opinion and that the doctor’s conclusion that there was “no evidence of a pneumoconiotic disease process ... [and a lack of] ... sufficient objective evidence to justify a diagnosis of coal workers’ pneumoconiosis” was entitled to greater weight than he had previously thought.
Because I am unable to say that the order of the Benefits Review Board, remanding the matter to the Administrative Law Judge, was so fact-oriented as to constitute a de novo review of the Administrative Law Judge’s determination [see Gibas v. Saginaw Mining Company, 748 F.2d 1112 (6th Cir.1984) ], and am satisfied that the Administrative Law Judge engaged in an independent reassessment of the evidence upon remand, I conclude that the orders of the Benefits Review Board should be affirmed.