Winslow v. Commissioner of Social Security

566 F. App'x 418
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
DecidedMay 15, 2014
Docket13-6252
StatusUnpublished
Cited by51 cases

This text of 566 F. App'x 418 (Winslow v. Commissioner of Social Security) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Winslow v. Commissioner of Social Security, 566 F. App'x 418 (6th Cir. 2014).

Opinion

PER CURIAM.

Cathy M. Winslow appeals the district court’s judgment affirming the denial of her applications for disability-insurance benefits and supplemental-security-income benefits.

Winslow filed applications for disability-insurance benefits and supplemental-security-income benefits, alleging that she became disabled on April 80, 2009. After the Social Security Administration denied the applications, Winslow requested a hearing before an administrative law judge (ALJ). The ALJ denied Winslow relief, and the Appeals Council declined to review the case. The district court affirmed the denial of Winslow’s applications.

On appeal, Winslow raises the following arguments: (1) the ALJ failed to properly resolve a conflict between the testimony of the vocational expert (VE) and the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT) and related materials; (2) the ALJ failed to perform a function-by-function assessment of her residual functional capacity (RFC), and the ALJ’s decision was not supported by substantial evidence; (3) the ALJ failed to accurately portray Winslow’s limitations in her hypothetical questions to the VE; (4) the ALJ erred by concluding that Win-slow’s testimony was not fully credible; and (5) the district court erred by declining to remand the case to the ALJ for consideration of additional medical evidence.

“Our review of the ALJ’s decision is limited to whether the ALJ applied the correct legal standards and whether the findings of the ALJ are supported by substantial evidence.” Blakley v. Comm’r of Soc. Sec., 581 F.3d 399, 405 (6th Cir.2009). “The substantial-evidence standard is met if a reasonable mind might accept the relevant evidence as adequate to support a conclusion.” Id. at 406 (internal quotation marks omitted). “We give de novo review to the district court’s conclusions on each issue.” Id.

Winslow first argues that the ALJ failed to fulfill her duty under Social Security Ruling (SSR) 00-4p to resolve a conflict between the VE’s testimony and information in the DOT and related materials. Winslow specifically contends that the YE’s assumption that a limitation to “simple tasks” is equivalent to a limitation to unskilled work conflicted with the DOT because some unskilled jobs require reasoning, mathematical, language, and other abilities that are not simple. The ALJ did not err by failing to explicitly address this issue because the alleged discrepancy is not the type of actual or apparent conflict that necessitates a resolution under SSR 0(Mp. See Lindsley v. Comm’r of Soc. Sec., 560 F.3d 601, 605 (6th Cir.2009) (holding that “[t]he fact ... that a VE and the DOT might use different terminology to *421 describe employment positions does not establish that a conflict exists between these sources of evidence”); Monateri v. Comm’r of Soc. Sec., 436 Fed.Appx. 434, 446 (6th Cir.2011) (rejecting “the proposition that [DOT] jobs requiring reasoning levels two or three are inconsistent as a matter of law with a limitation to simple work”). “[T]he Social Security Administration imposes an affirmative duty on ALJs to ask VEs if the evidence that they have provided conflicts with the information provided in the DOT.” Lindsley, 560 F.3d at 606. Here the VE stated that his testimony was consistent with the DOT. The ALJ thus satisfied his obligation and no “actual or apparent conflict” existed to warrant further investigation or reconciliation.

Winslow next argues that the ALJ failed to perform a function-by-function assessment of her RFC as required by 20 C.F.R. §§ 404.1545 and 416.945 and SSR 96-8p. The record reflects, however, that the ALJ complied with the applicable regulations by assessing each of Winslow’s work-related limitations that were at issue. See Rudd v. Comm’r of Soc. Sec., 531 Fed.Appx. 719, 729 (6th Cir.2013); Delgado v. Comm’r of Soc. Sec., 30 Fed.Appx. 542, 547-48 (6th Cir.2002).

Winslow next argues that the ALJ’s decision is not supported by substantial evidence for two reasons: (1) the representative jobs that the VE identified were inconsistent with the restrictions imposed by the ALJ; and (2) the ALJ failed to properly weigh the opinions of Dr. Benjamin Parker and Dr. Thomas Muehleman that Winslow had significant limitations in dealing with work-related stress and other individuals and the contrary opinions of the state-agency psychological consultants and the testifying medical expert.

Substantial evidence supported the ALJ’s decision because at least two of the representative jobs identified by the VE, namely, office helper and escort-vehicle driver, see Dictionary of Occupational Titles §§ 239.567-010, 919.663-022, existed in significant numbers in the national economy, see 20 C.F.R. §§ 404.1566, 416.966, and were consistent with the ALJ’s decision to restrict Winslow to light work involving the performance of simple tasks in a low-stress environment, see Moore v. Astrue, 623 F.3d 599, 604 (8th Cir.2010) (concluding that a restriction to carrying out simple job instructions and performing simple, routine, and repetitive work activity does not preclude performance of jobs requiring level 2 reasoning); Hackett v. Barnhart, 395 F.3d 1168, 1176 (10th Cir.2005) (concluding that a restriction to simple and routine work tasks does not preclude performance of jobs requiring level 2 reasoning). In addition, the ALJ reasonably gave little weight to Dr. Parker’s February 2011 opinion on the basis that he had not seen Winslow in four years and his conclusions were based on data from a time before her alleged disability date. See 20 C.F.R. §§ 404.1527(c), 416.927(c); Gayheart v. Comm’r of Soc. Sec., 710 F.3d 365, 376 (6th Cir.2013). Likewise, the ALJ reasonably discounted Dr. Muehleman’s concerns regarding Winslow’s inability to tolerate work-related stress on the basis of the medical expert’s testimony that Win-slow’s difficulty could be neutralized by limiting her to simple work in a low-stress environment.

Winslow next argues that the ALJ failed to properly incorporate all of her work-related limitations into the hypothetical questions posed to the VE. The record reflects, however, that the hypothetical questions were proper because the ALJ incorporated all of the functional limitations that she deemed credible. See Casey v. Sec’y of Health & Human Servs., 987 F.2d 1230

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566 F. App'x 418, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/winslow-v-commissioner-of-social-security-ca6-2014.