Williams v. Saul

Background

Pamela J. Williams sought review under 42 U.S.C. § 405(g) of the Commissioner’s decision denying her disability insurance benefits. She alleged disability beginning in January 2011 based on, among other conditions, fibromyalgia, a herniated disc, obesity, depression, sciatica, and mild carpal tunnel syndrome. Williams had previously obtained a remand for further proceedings on a narrow issue involving whether she could perform her past work as a customer service representative.

After remand, the administrative law judge again found that Williams could perform light work, with the ability to sit for six hours in an eight-hour workday and a requirement to change positions after sitting for fifteen minutes, standing for about one minute each time. The judge relied on vocational-expert testimony that Williams could perform customer-service-representative work as generally performed in the national economy, although the vocational expert gave equivocal answers about whether the job could be performed while standing, using a cane, and working at a computer.

Constitutional Appointment Challenge

Williams argued that the administrative law judge had not been properly appointed under the Constitution’s Appointment Clause. The court held that Williams forfeited this argument because she admitted that she had not raised it during the administrative proceedings. The court explained that the remedy for a timely challenge would be a new hearing before a properly appointed administrative law judge, but it did not grant that relief here.

Vocational-Expert Testimony and Past Work

The court held that the administrative law judge’s Step Four finding—that Williams could perform her past customer-service-representative work as generally performed—was not supported by substantial evidence. Substantial evidence means enough relevant evidence that a reasonable person could accept it as supporting the conclusion.

The Dictionary of Occupational Titles described the customer-service-representative position as sedentary work. The court explained that Social Security rulings generally interpret sedentary work as requiring sitting for two-hour intervals, with normal breaks. Williams’s residual functional capacity instead required her to stand for one minute every fifteen minutes. That created an actual conflict between the job description and her limitation.

The administrative law judge did not specifically ask the vocational expert to explain that conflict. The expert’s testimony was also conditional and uncertain: whether Williams could continue working while standing depended on the workstation and the specific job. The expert acknowledged that a worker who could not continue working during the standing periods would be off task too often, and that using a cane could interfere with typing. The court found that the expert did not provide a sufficient factual basis or explanation for departing from the Dictionary of Occupational Titles, particularly because the job description involved using a computer.

The court therefore concluded that the administrative law judge committed non-harmless error by relying on speculative and conclusory vocational-expert testimony without definitively explaining the conflict.

Treating Physician’s Opinions and Fibromyalgia Evidence

The court also held that the administrative law judge improperly discounted the opinions of Williams’s treating physician, Dr. Cheung. Dr. Cheung stated that Williams had severe and persistent pain, could not sit or stand in one place for extended periods, needed a cane, and could not sustain competitive work. The administrative law judge gave those opinions little weight because they allegedly lacked objective support and were inconsistent with the record.

The court found those reasons legally insufficient. It emphasized that Williams’s fibromyalgia diagnosis, treatment history, and consistent reports of pain were not contradicted. The record included findings of tenderness at all eighteen examined soft-tissue points, which the court treated as objective evidence supporting the severity of her fibromyalgia. The court concluded that the administrative law judge failed to give specific and legitimate reasons—and, for uncontradicted medical opinions, failed to give clear and convincing reasons—for rejecting Dr. Cheung’s limitations.

Remedy and Disposition

The court applied the credit-as-true rule, which can require improperly rejected evidence to be treated as true when the record is fully developed, the administrative law judge gave legally insufficient reasons for rejecting the evidence, and crediting it would require a finding of disability. The court found those conditions satisfied. It determined that further vocational-expert testimony or other administrative proceedings would serve no useful purpose, especially because the case had already been remanded once on the same vocational issue.

The court concluded that crediting Dr. Cheung’s opinions as true required a finding that Williams was disabled and that there was no serious reason to doubt that conclusion. Judge William H. Orrick therefore granted Williams’s motion for summary judgment, denied the Commissioner’s cross-motion, and remanded the case solely for determination of the appropriate payment of benefits.