Notes
1. The Sixth Circuit made a huge mistake. It talked about the claimant's age "[a]t the time of her administrative hearing." A claimant's age on the date of an oral hearing is legally irrelevant. The claimant's age on the date of his or her oral hearing has absolutely positively no legal significance. None. Nada. Null. Zip. Zilch. Zero. It has as much legal significance as the day on which the claimant ate three Quarter Pounders With Cheese in ten minutes.
2. This is the most important borderline situation mechanical application case since Daniels v. Apfel, 154 F.3d 1129, 1133 (10th Cir. 1998). In Bowie, the Sixth Circuit applied two of its well-known rules: (1) ALJs don't have to say anything about anything, and (2) claimants are not disabled. Imagine at oral argument: "Counsel, why shouldn't we affirm the District Court's judgment under our longstanding, well-known rule that claimants are not disabled? Is Ms. Bowie a claimant? If she is, then she is not disabled. Period. End of story."
3. Practitioners in all Circuits including the Tenth need to know about Bowie. The Agency will attack Daniels in the Tenth Circuit with Bowie. Bowie also arguably requires the claimant to jump up and down about the mechanical application of age categories in a borderline situation. Start jumping up and down.
4.HALLEX, § II-5-3-2. This is the most important HALLEX case since Moore v. Apfel, 216 F.3d 864 (9th Cir. 2000). Practitioners in all Circuits need to read Bowie for its discussion of the HALLEX. By saying this I am not saying that Bowie is correct. I am saying that practitioners need to read Bowie. Practitioners should be relying on the HALLEX in litigation even in the Ninth Circuit. See Parra v. Astrue, 481 F.3d 742 (9th Cir. 2007), cert. denied 128 S. Ct. 1068 (2008).
5. And the claimant did not even have a representative!
2 comments:
Well now, this might in fact involve a "huge mistake." Yes indeed, it surely might. But I speculate the 6th circuit's language about age might well represent a more pedestrian proofing error.
The opinion says that "[a]t the time of her administrative hearing, Bowie was 49 years old and less than two months away from her 50th birthday." The dissent says "Bowie’s age at the time of the filing of her application for Disability Insurance Benefits was within four and a half months of fifty years old, . . . ." It's notable that the parties agreed that there was a borderline age situation.
If I had legitimate access to the case details—which I don't—I'd look to see if maybe the claimant was 4 ½ months from age 50 at the time of the hearing and then was 2 months away from age 50 at the time of the application.
My last six words should have been "at the time of the decision." It's not hard to make this kind of proofing error.
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