Court Opinion

ID: 9463414
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 23:06:03.619726+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:38:05.471851
License: Public Domain

WINTER, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
From my analysis of the record, I can neither conclude that the Secretary’s finding that the decedent was not totally disabled from pneumoconiosis at the time of his death is not supported by substantial evidence, nor that the only substantial evidence requires the converse finding. I respectfully dissent.
The principal evidence to support the Secretary’s finding is the earnings record of the deceased. It shows that for the full eight years prior to his death, his earnings remained relatively constant. The record is silent as to the average hourly wage in the coal fields of West Virginia throughout the crucial period and this is not a matter of which I feel free to take judicial knowledge. To my mind, the majority’s inference that Collins worked only because “management felt sympathy . . . and provided light labor for him” is unwarranted. His earnings record shows that he worked for divers employers. One could infer from that fact that it was very unlikely that Collins performed only “make-work.” Certainly the Secretary was not required to draw the majority’s inference; he could well draw that suggested by me.
*800Overall, I do not doubt that at the time of his death Collins was engaged “in gainful employment requiring the skills and abilities comparable to those of any employment in a mine or mines in which [he] previously engaged with some regularity and over a substantial period of time.” 30 U.S.C. § 902(f). It follows that the finding that he was not disabled should be unassailable.