I am pleased to bring you another successful outcome for a disabled person who was wrongly denied her social security benefits.
In this social security disability claim, the claimant was an over 50 year old woman who suffered from fibromyalgia and degenerative disc disease. Her past work was that of a nurse aid. Due to her impairments she applied for social security disability.
After a hearing before the SSA Judge, the judge denied her claim for benefits. The judge applied what are known as the "grids" to her claim and found her not disabled per those grids.
What are these "grids"? In simplest terms they are nothing more than a quickie shortcut for SSA Judges to use in deciding whether or not a claimant is disabled or not disabled. The grids are a series of tables that simply ask for the claimant's age, her work skill level and her education level. The grids take no account of a claimant's impairments such a pain or mental illness. A SSA Judge can then simply plug and crank the claimant's age, education and work capacity levels into the grid tables, run his finger down the table and the table will indicate "disabled" or "not disabled". And that is exactly what the SSA Judge did in the case of this claimant. He ran his finger down the grid tables and picked out grid no. 202.17 which simply said "not disabled".
That is why we then appealed this claim to the federal court system. The SSA judge's use of the grid table to decide that this claimant was not disabled was completely wrong. As noted, when using a grid table, a SSA Judge, simply runs his fingers down the table to the claimant's age, education and work level for a decision on disability.
Many claimants wrongly assume that a SSA judge knows what he is doing when he runs his finger down the grid table and give up any further appeal.
Remember in this case the claimant was over 50 years old and had only worked as a nurse aid. The SSA Judge in this case ran his finger down the wrong grid table. Grid table rule 202.17 is only for claimant's who are "younger"; i.e., less than 45 years of age. The Judge used the completely wrong grid rule; a grid rule that applied to much younger persons than this claimant.
Additionally the SSA Judge found that the claimant had work "skills" earned from her job as a nurse aid almost 30 years earlier. These factual findings by the SSA Judge were also completely wrong. A nurse aide job is per definition "unskilled" work. The claimant could not have suddenly gained higher work skills from a job that had no work skills in the first place. Secondly, the nurse aid job was performed almost 30 years ago. The SSA Judge failed to note this fact. Once again the rules and laws are clear that work performed more than 15 years prior to the SSA claim is not to be considered by the SSA Judge.
On arguing these factual mistakes by the SSA Judge to the federal court, the federal court readily agreed with us. The federal court found that the SSA judge used the wrong age when resorting to the grid table; used the the wrong skill level for a nurse aide job, and simply failed to produce any substantial evidence to support his denial. The federal court recommended that the SSA Judge's decision be thrown out due to its multiple errors and the case be sent back to the SSA for a proper hearing.
The lesson learned for claimants is that in any SSA claim that is denied by a SSA Judge using the grids, make sure that the correct grids were used (or should have even been used) by the SSA judge. Grids are quickie shortcuts in SSA claims that can often lead to wrongful denials of claims.
