FACEBOOK POSTING DERAILS FEDERAL WORKER'S INJURY CLAIM

POSTING ON FACEBOOK AND OTHER SOCIAL WEBSITES CAN BE HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH...LITERALLY

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT DENIES INJURY AND MEDICAL BENEFITS BASED ON FACEBOOK POSTINGS BY CLAIMANT

The lesson to be learned here is that one should never post on a social website such as Facebook what one does not want her employer or the federal government to read.

In this federal workers' compensation claim, the claimant alleged she injured her neck while on the job with the USPS.  She sought medical treatment and submitted reams of medical treatment reports backing her claim of injury.  However she also made postings on her Facebook page which she did not think the government would be reading.  They do and they did.

As result of her Facebook postings the federal government denied her claim for injury benefits and compensation.

The government found that:

"Based on the instant record, therefore, there are discrepancies in the accounts of injury appellant provided to different people. This contradictory evidence created an uncertainty as to the time, place and in the manner in which appellant sustained her alleged neck injury. Appellant allegedly injured her neck during the April 29, 2010 work incident, but according to her supervisors she did not provide notification to the employing establishment for four days, after initially advising that she had injured her back during the incident. In addition, while not relevant to the issue of whether appellant injured her neck on April 29, 2010, appellant’s credibility is further diminished because she denied running in several long distance races in March and April 2010, despite the fact that the employing establishment produced documentary evidence and a Facebook entry which indicated that she participated in several races during this period."......."For the reasons stated above, the Board finds that appellant did not meet her burden of proof to establish fact of injury."

ECAB FINDS OWCP HAS DIFFERENT RULES OF TIMELINESS

DEPENDING ON APPEAL FILED, CLAIMANTS MUST EITHER SHOW THE OWCP TIMELY RECEIVED THE APPEAL OR THAT THE APPEAL WAS TIMELY MAILED

According to 20 CFR 10.607, the OWCP changed the rules for filing requests for reconsiderations. 
Now a claimant must show that the OWCP "received" the request before the one year deadline.  The claimant bears the to show proof of receipt.
However a different rule applies for request for hearing. 
According to ECAB, the claimant must only show that he or she sent the request within 30 days of the decision appealed.  Whether or not the Board "receives" the appeal is not the problem of the claimant (who needs only to show a postmark mailing) but of the OWCP to show evidence of the date of mailing.

ECAB REMANDS FED COMP DECISION AS OWCP APPEARED CONFUSED

Interesting federal workers compensation appeal in that the ECAB reversed and remanded a decision of denial by the OWCP as the latter appeared confused in its decision.
Here the claimant filed a request for reconsideration out of time with the OWCP.   The OWCP reviewed the merits of his request and denied modification as there was no "clear evidence of error shown by the claimant."   But then the OWCP  listed various documents it reviewed on the reconsideration request, found that the evidence was new, but chose not to modify its prior denial.
The ECAB held that the OWCP was confused by applying two standards of review to one case.
A request for reconsideration that is submitted out of time looks only for "clear evidence of error".  
But if the reconsideration is timely submitted (As OWCP indicated here) then the OWCP looks at whether the claimant has submitted new evidence, advanced a relevant new legal argument, or demonstrated that the OWCP erroneously applied or interpreted a specific point of law.
Two different standards of review.
Additionally the ECAB found the OWCP's decision lacking as  it did not contain findings of fact and a statement of reasons. "The mere recitation of the dates of various medical reports and statements will not suffice for purposes of determining whether [the claimant] is entitled to further merit review of his claim for a schedule award."

FEDERAL WORKERS' COMPENSATION OVERRULES OWN DENIALS; AWARDS BENEFITS

In this claim for federal workers' compensation benefits from the USDOL "Office of Workers' Compensation Programs" (OWCP), the client had filed a claim for an on the job injury to her back due to improper work placement. The OWCP repeatedly denied her claim finding that the client had failed to provide medical evidence of injury and provided no witnesses to any injury.

The client rightfully continued with her appeal to the OWCP. On appeal we argued that per the OWCP's own case decisions, an on the job injury in the federal workplace does not have to be confirmed by eyewitnesses in order to establish that the work incident had indeed occurred.

In fact, we showed that per the OWCP's own internal reports and experts, this left-handed client was admittedly wrongly placed by the federal employer into a right-handed work station causing her to literally work in a hunched, backward position.

And despite contentions by the government that the workstation had been ergonomically designed, we showed that the federal agency own records revealed that no ergonomic training had been provided to the client.

As regards any alleged lack of medical evidence of injury we showed the claimant had properly and dutifully submitted years of medical treatment reports that the OWCP had simply and wrongly ignored. We argued on appeal that the OWCP cannot simply ignore the medical evidence of record and then claim that no injury occurred due to lack of medical evidence.

These arguments on appeal were successful and that USDOL OWCP reversed its prior decisions denying her claim for federal worker's compensation and awarded her full benefits

DENIAL OF FEDERAL MEDICAL DISABILITY RETIREMENT CLAIM RESCINDED

In this federal disability retirement claim, the client had applied for medical disability retirement under the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS). She alleged that she was no longer capable of working at her federal job due to severe mental and physical disorders. In fact her federal employer agency agreed that she could no longer do her job and that accommodation or reassignment of her to other work was not possible.

And once again the federal system continued to deny her claim for disability retirement benefits.

However she also stuck with her claim and continued her appeal up to the Merit System Protection Board asking for a hearing before an Administrative Judge.

There we obtained and provided medical evidence from her doctors showing that the client was not able to function in a workplace environment. We also obtained and provided a vocational evaluation that showed, after thorough testing, the client would not be able to work in her federal job nor at any other job due to her severe impairments.

Upon filing this evidence and then waiting until the eve of hearing, the federal agency quickly issued a statement agreeing that the client was entitled to her medical disability retirement benefits and rescinded in full their prior history of denials on her claim without further comment. The MSPB promptly ordered award and payment of benefits.

FEDERAL COURT RECOMMENDS THAT SOCIAL SECURITY JUDGE'S DENIAL OF DISABILITY BENEFITS BE OVERRULED

According to the SSA itself, the vast majority of SSA disability claims are wrongly denied by SSA clerical staff workers.

People who apply for social security disability benefits are well advised to stay with their disability claims despite being denied on their claims by the Social Security Administration.

The SSA's own published statistics show as follows:

 If you are just now applying for social security disability benefits, the SSA clerical staff will deny your claim 75% of the time. Thus for every 4 new disability claims filed in the US, the SSA clerical staff will deny 3 of them.

If you appeal that denial, the SSA clerical staff will deny 93% of those appeals.

However, if you hang in there and appeal that denial and ask for a hearing before a SSA Judge, there is a huge turnaround in statistics. By asking for a hearing in front of a SSA Judge, on average, 2 out of 3 claims (66.6% of those previously denied claims) for disability will now be approved and awarded.

And at the federal court level, more than 50% or 1 out of every 2 SSA decisions are overturned as having been wrongly decided by the SSA clerks and judges.

This was precisely the lesson learned by a client who decided not to give up on his disability claims even though he had been repeatedly denied on his claim by SSA clerical staff workers and eventually a SSA Administrative Law Judge (ALJ).

In this client's case; he had applied for disability claiming that severe mental problems prevented him from doing any work. The SSA clerks as expected repeatedly denied his claim. The SSA ALJ Judge also denied his claim saying that although the client was disabled due to severe mental problems, he was not entitled to any disability benefits as the client was an alcoholic. The problem was that the SSA ALJ never provided any substantial evidence to support his finding that the client's severe mental impairments were due to alcohol abuse. That was what we argued to the federal court on appeal and the federal court agreed. The federal court found that where there is evidence of severe mental impairments that disable a person and there is evidence of drug or alcohol abuse, the SSA ALJ bears the burden to separate the two diseases to determine their full impact effect on a claimant's ability to work or not work. Here the ALJ did not bother to separate the client's admittedly severe mental impairments from the effects of any alleged alcohol abuse. The federal court recommended the SSA ALJ's decision to deny benefits be overturned and the case returned to the SSA for re-hearing.

FEDERAL AGENCY WEBSITES ARE A NIGHTMARE

FEDERAL AGENCY WEBSITES ARE A COMPLETE MESS ACCORDING TO GOVERNMENT OVERSIGHT REVIEW

There are 56 "large" federal agencies in the United States.
All of them are present on the internet.
One would think that with 56 agencies, they would each have their own website, thus there would be 56 websites to manage, correct?

Not quite.

For these 56 largest federal agencies alone, there are more than 11,000 websites and 1,400 domain names.

That is right, for 56 government agencies, there are more than 11,000 websites.

None of the websites have any single theme, none have any central oversight or control and virtually all of them lack any consistent monitoring.

For American citizens trying to find simple information from or about a specific federal agency that can be a literal nightmare.

SOCIAL SECURITY JUDGES POST THEIR VIEWS ABOUT SSA CLAIMANTS

PUBLIC POSTINGS BY SOCIAL SECURITY JUDGES GIVES EYE-OPENING VIEW OF HOW THEY REALLY VIEW DISABILITY CLAIMANTS

Ever wonder, as a disabled person applying for social security disability benefits, just how do social security judges really view and feel about disability claimants, their representatives and the entire social security process?  Do the social security judges, who are appointed for life, view disabled claimants with compassion and seek to do the best for social security disability claimants?  Or do they openly discuss and view disabled Americans in a completely different light?  You can read their Internet postings here and judge for yourselves how impartial, or not, they may be.  You may very well be quite surprised at what you read as being posted on the Internet by social security judges and their views of disabled claimants.

http://aljdiscussion.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=1858



SSA MAKES SSA JUDGES IDENTITY SECRET

SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION TELLS DISABLED CLAIMANTS THEY WILL NO LONGER BE ALLOWED TO SEE WHO THEIR SSA JUDGE WILL BE BEFORE THEIR HEARING

In deliberate attempt to prevent disabled Americans from learning who will be their judge at their social security disability hearing, the SSA has announced a new rule that neither the claimant or their attorney will be allowed to see who their judge is until they walk into the hearing.

In the past couple of years, after keeping the information secret, the SSA was ordered to start publishing the case rates for SSA offices and SSA Judges nationwide. Those now public win-loss rates for SSA Judges not only reveal how many cases a SSA Judge has ruled on in the past year, but how many were denied or awarded.  Additionally the tables show which Judges lag far behind in their case and which SSA offices also lag behind in deciding disability claims.  Those tables are available to see here.
The SSA and the Judges (who are appointed for life and literally cannot be removed from their jobs) obviously did not like this secret information being revealed to the public.This secrecy ruling is likely due as well to a Wall Street Journal article appearing earlier this year showing how inconsistent SSA Judges are in their decision making. Despite the SSA rules being the same across the country for everyone, thus similar cases should all have the same outcome, SSA judge's vary wildly in their decision such that more than one out of two SSA Judges' decision are reversed on later federal court appeals.
So after being ordered by Federal Courts to release the "win-loss" rates handed out on disability claims by SSA Judges; which the SSA had kept secret for decades, the SSA has decided to thumb its nose at the federal courts and the American public and that secrecy still remain the rule at the SSA.
In what can only be described as a deliberate attempt to step around these orders releasing SSA case rates to the public, the SSA has issued a notice that imposes a secrecy rule on upcoming hearings.  Disabled claimants and their attorneys will not be permitted to learn who their assigned SSA judge until they sit down at their disability hearing.  Disability claimants and their attorneys will literally be walking blind into SSA hearings without being able to know which Judge is on their case and how that judge will process the claim.

WHAT ARE THE SSA STATISTICS ON WINNING MY DISABILITY CLAIM?

SSA PUBLISHES ANNUAL STATISTICS ON AWARDS AND DENIALS OF DISABILITY CLAIMS ACROSS THE NATION

The more you appeal the better your chance of success

The Social Security Administration keeps track of all disability claims filed in the country and breaks those down into numbers of claims filed, denied, awarded, etc.  Even more so the SSA breaks claims down into state by state regions, ages of claimants, diseases claims as disabilities, etc.
But the overall statistics remain pretty much the same.
If you are just now applying for social security disability benefits, the SSA will deny your claim 75% of the time.  Thus for every 4 new disability claims filed in the US, the SSA will deny 3 of them.
If you appeal that denial, the SSA will deny 93% of those appeals. 
However, if you hang in there and appeal that denial and ask for a hearing before a SSA Judge, there is a huge turnaround in statistics.  By asking for a hearing in front of a SSA Judge, on average, 2 out of 3 claims for disability will now be approved and awarded.

Lesson learned:  in filing for social security disability the SSA highly discourages claimants from proceeding with their claims by denying up to 93% of the claims.  However, by simply hanging in there and continuing to appeal, the chances turn around in your favor such that 2 out of 3 claims are awarded.  Keep filing your appeals in any SSA disability claim!