Once again, a United States Federal Court has agreed with my argument on appeal that the SSA Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) wrongfully denied disability benefits to a deserving claimant.

In this case, the claimant is a young man who was severely injured while lifting a patient in his job as a nurse aide more than six years ago.  His injuries required years of medical treatment including major surgeries in attempt to repair his herniated spine.  Although he was once healthy, due to his injury he could no longer bend or lift, and could not effectively use his hand.  Four years ago, he filed for social security disability benefits.  Almost two years later, after review of his claim, the ALJ issued a decision denying any benefits.  The ALJ found that even though the claimant could not perform his past work and had no job skills, the claimant could still perform "other work" such as a "machine operator", "assembly" and "order clerk" and thus was not disabled.

We proceeded to file an appeal of this denial in Federal Court.  There we made argument that the ALJ failed to follow the rules in deciding whether a person is disabled.  For example, under the federal rules, once a claimant has proven that he can no longer perform his past work, the burden of proof shifts to the ALJ to prove that he can perform other jobs.  The ALJ must show that such jobs exist in significant numbers in the region and that the claimant can perform those jobs taking into account his age, education and work experience.  The United States keeps a list of such jobs in a book called the Dictionary of Occupational Titles, and rules require that the ALJ use and reference that list.

We argued on appeal that the ALJ failed to meet his burden of proof regarding these other jobs of machine operator, assembly, and order clerk.  We argued that it was literally impossible to determine which exact jobs of machine operator and assembly the ALJ was talking about as the Dictionary of Occupational Titles lists hundreds of such jobs, each different.  We also argued that the job of order clerk was impossible as that job, would require use of both hands to carry food trays, something the claimant could not do with only one workable hand.

The SSA attempted to argue that it was not the job of their ALJ to be specific in his decision.  The SSA also attempted to argue that it was the claimant's burden of proof to show what other jobs are available.

The Federal Court quickly disagreed with the SSA attempts.  The Court found that the ALJ's decision was "troubling to the Court" as the ALJ failed to specifically identify from the Dictionary of Occupational Titles what exact jobs he was referring to as machine operator and assembly.  The Court found that in reality there were more than 3,000 different jobs described by the Dictionary as machine operator and assembly.  The Court openly questioned "how thorough an investigation the ALJ" actually accomplished when determining that the claimant could perform such jobs without bothering to identify which specific  job of thousands of possibilities he was referring to in his decision.  

In summary the Court found that since the SSA itself admittedly did not know what specific jobs the ALJ was referring to as "other work", then neither could the Court know and the decision of the ALJ denying benefits must be reversed.  The claim will now be sent back to the SSA for another hearing to resolve these inconsistencies.