Tracy Marie Clarkin v. Frank Bisignano

Summary

The United States District Court for the District of Hawai‘i reversed the Commissioner of Social Security’s denial of Tracy Marie Clarkin’s disability benefits applications and remanded for further administrative proceedings. The court held that the administrative law judge failed to provide specific, clear, and convincing reasons for rejecting Clarkin’s symptom testimony, including reliance on treatment history, daily activities, and the reason she stopped working. The court declined to reach Clarkin’s other arguments.

Holdings

1. When an ALJ does not find malingering and finds that a claimant's impairments could reasonably be expected to produce the alleged symptoms, the ALJ may reject the claimant's testimony about symptom severity only by providing specific, clear, and convincing reasons.
2. The ALJ did not provide a sufficient basis to reject Clarkin's symptom testimony by relying on normal observations during periodic telehealth appointments, conservative treatment, partial symptom improvement, or failure to obtain recommended therapy.
3. An ALJ may rely on a claimant's activities of daily living to discount symptom testimony only when the activities actually contradict the testimony or show that the claimant spends a substantial part of the day engaged in pursuits transferable to a work setting.
4. The fact that a claimant stopped working for reasons other than an impairment may be considered in evaluating symptom testimony, but the ALJ must provide reasons supported by the record for concluding that the claimant stopped working altogether for a non-impairment reason.
5. The Commissioner's decision was reversed and the case remanded for further administrative proceedings because the ALJ's rejection of Clarkin's symptom statements was legally insufficient.

Questions Presented

1. Whether the ALJ provided specific, clear, and convincing reasons for rejecting Clarkin's symptom testimony when the ALJ found no malingering and found that her impairments could reasonably be expected to produce the alleged symptoms.
2. Whether the ALJ properly relied on mental-status observations, conservative treatment, partial improvement with treatment, failure to obtain recommended therapy, activities of daily living, and the reason Clarkin stopped working to discount her symptom statements.
3. Whether the Commissioner's final disability determination was supported by substantial evidence and free of legal error.

Disposition

reversed_and_remanded