Court Opinion

ID: 9475179
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:19:16.10606+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:44:33.203804
License: Public Domain

JOHNSON, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I cannot agree with the conclusion of the majority that the Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) gave proper legal weight to the opinion of Noah Bell’s attending physician, Dr. Rahaim. The Court acknowl*1355edges the well-established rule that an ALJ must accord substantial weight to the opinion of a claimant’s treating physician unless good cause is shown to the contrary. Broughton v. Heckler, 776 F.2d 960, 961 (11th Cir.1985) (per curiam). However, the majority finds no actual conflict among the medical diagnoses of the three doctors presenting opinions, and a divergence only “with respect to disability to work” that is “not sufficiently articulated in Bell’s behalf to warrant a finding that Bell could not do a full range of sedentary work.” The Court therefore discounts the opinion of Bell’s treating physician with no further discussion of “good cause.”
The majority’s somewhat tortured analysis obscures a simple case. Bell clearly suffers from a debilitating heart ailment. Dr. Rahaim’s conclusion that Bell is “totally disabled,” and that “[h]is condition will not improve and he will continue to suffer from severe disability” seems to me a well-articulated and quite powerful expression of Bell’s incapacity to work. Further, that conclusion inescapably conflicts with the opinions of Drs. Anderson and Cobb that Bell can perform a full range of “sedentary work activities.”
Given such a conflict, we are charged by precedent and by common sense to weigh the conclusion of the physician who has treated Bell for eleven years over the views of two consulting doctors who actually examined Bell, respectively, once and not at all. “It is not only legally relevant but unquestionably logical that the opinions, diagnosis, and medical evidence of a treating physician whose familiarity with the patient’s injuries, course of treatment, and responses over a considerable length of time, should be given considerable weight.” Id. at 962, quoting Smith v. Schweiker, 646 F.2d 1075, 1081 (5th Cir.1981). Since the ALJ did not accord sufficient weight to Dr. Rahaim’s opinion of Bell’s “total disability,” his decision was simply erroneous as a matter of law.