I watched the oral argument on this case back in June. The Court decided Perkins v. Kijakazi on August 22, 2022. Another win for truth.
The lie in this case goes back to a hearing in 2011. The vocational witness testified to sedentary unskilled work:
- table worker (351,000 jobs in the national economy),
- small products inspector (81,000 jobs in the national economy), and
- polisher (147,000 jobs in the national economy).
Not in 2011 and not at the second hearing where no vocational witness testified. The ALJ just bought the lie eight years ago. But Kilpatrick v. Kijakazi told us that stale evidence was not good evidence. I am going to assume that Judge Fletcher was aware of Kilpatrick since he wrote it. Perkins is a memorandum disposition, so no author is attributed and as a memorandum disposition, it hits only the high points not the nuanced details.
Perkins does not turn on the ALJ reliance on stale evidence. Perkins submitted Job Browser Pro to the Appeals Council. Court says, "good enough to rebut the presumption of reliability." The ALJ must resolve the conflict. Since the evidence was sent to the Appeals Council, the agency should have sent it back. The Appeals Council action is not reviewable, but the evidence considered by the Appeals Council counts for substantial evidence purposes.
More to the point, when is SSA going to get around to calling out its witnesses for making it up on the fly. One, just one, investigation into perjury allegations and this garbage would come to a screaming stop. But that would interfere with the business of denying legitimate cases. Bogus vocational testimony like that given in 2011 and adopted in 2019 does actual harm to real people and violates the social contract with have framed within the disability provisions of the Social Security Act.
___________________________
No comments:
Post a Comment