O'Neill v. US Social Security Administration, Acting Commissioner

Filing 9

///ORDER denying 5 Motion to Reverse Decision of Commissioner; granting 8 Motion to Affirm Decision of Commissioner. The clerk shall enter judgment accordingly and close the case. So Ordered by Chief Judge Joseph N. Laplante.(jb)

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
DISTRICT OF NEW HAMPSHIRE
Mary Jane O’Neill
v.

Civil No. 14-cv-48-JL
Opinion No. 2015 DNH 032

Carolyn W. Colvyn, Acting Commissioner,
Social Security Administration
ORDER ON APPEAL
Mary Jane O’Neill has appealed the Social Security
Administration’s denial of her application for a period of
disability and disability insurance benefits.1

An administrative

law judge at the SSA (“ALJ”) ruled that, despite O’Neill’s severe
impairments (peripheral vascular disease--also known as
“Raynaud’s syndrome”--scoliosis, and reduced vision in one eye),
she remains capable of performing her past relevant work, as a
secretary, and, as a result, is not disabled.
§ 404.1505(a).

See 20 C.F.R.

The Appeals Council later denied O’Neill’s

request for review of the ALJ’s decision, see id. § 404.968(a),
with the result that the ALJ’s decision became the final decision
on O’Neill’s application, see id. § 404.981.

O’Neill appealed

the decision to this court, which has jurisdiction under 42
U.S.C. § 405(g) (Social Security).

1

O’Neill’s first name is spelled a number of different ways
in her submissions, including “Mary-Jane,” “MaryJane,”
“Maryjane,” and “Mary Jane.” The court has used the last of
these, since it is how O’Neill wrote her own name on several
forms she filed with the SSA.

O’Neill has filed a motion to reverse the decision.
L.R. 9.1(b)(1).

See

She argues that, in finding that O’Neill could

perform her past relevant work as a secretary, the ALJ failed to
properly account for the effects of either O’Neill’s reduced
vision or her Raynaud’s syndrome (which impacts her use of her
hands).

O’Neill further asserts that the ALJ erred by ignoring

the opinion of a state health department physician that O’Neill’s
migraine headaches amounted to a severe impairment.

The Acting

Commissioner of the SSA has cross-moved for an order affirming
the ALJ’s decision, see L.R. 9.1(d), arguing that he adequately
considered the record evidence.

For the reasons explained fully

below, the court agrees with the Commissioner, and therefore
grants her motion to affirm (and denies O’Neill’s motion to
reverse) the ALJ’s decision.
In deciding whether a claimant can perform her past relevant
work, an ALJ compares its physical and mental demands to his
assessment of the claimant’s residual functional capacity
(“RFC”).

See 20 C.F.R. § 404.1560(b).

Here, in relevant part,

the ALJ found that O’Neill retained the RFC for sedentary work,
with certain postural and environmental limitations (including no
concentrated exposure to cold) as well as that “[d]ue to left eye
blindness, she has limited depth perception, but she is able to
read a computer screen.”

Based on this finding, a vocational

2

expert who testified at the hearing opined--and the ALJ then
ruled--that O’Neill could indeed perform her past relevant work
as a secretary.
O’Neill argues that this finding was in error because “it
failed to address the impact her peripheral vascular disease
would have on her ability to perform secretarial work which
requires frequent use of the hands and fingers.”

In reaching his

RFC determination, however, the ALJ specifically noted that,
while O’Neill “alleges that her peripheral vascular disease
causes her great pain in her hands and feet preventing her from
writing, typing and walking,” her “statements concerning the
intensity, persistence and limiting effects of these symptoms are
not entirely credible.”

The ALJ explained that O’Neill’s

“medical records do not show persistent functional limitations
due to Raynaud’s syndrome,” but, instead, document normal
clinical findings.

The ALJ further observed that a physician who

completed a consultative examination of O’Neill, Dr. Matthew
Masewic, concluded that, while she has “a history consistent with
Raynaud’s, this has only a mild effect on her functional
capacity, and that she should avoid cold conditions.”

The ALJ

gave Masewic’s opinion great weight because, among other reasons,
“it is consistent with the medical evidence of record and

3

[O’Neill’s] reported daily activities, which show the ability to
carry out a fairly full, active lifestyle.”
In her motion to reverse the ALJ’s decision, O’Neill does
not acknowledge any of this reasoning, let alone try to show that
it was in error.

Her only reference to the record evidence, in

fact, is to her own testimony at the hearing as to the limiting
effects of her Raynaud’s syndrome--testimony which, as just
discussed, the ALJ found not to be credible for reasons that, as
just noted, O’Neill has not even addressed.
While this is perhaps inevitable--given that no medical
source of record has ever differed with Masewic’s opinion that
O’Neill’s Raynaud’s syndrome imposes only a “mild effect on
functional capacity”2--it is nonetheless problematic, since the
law “requires the ALJ to evaluate the credibility of a claimant’s
testimony about her symptoms and their limiting effect in light
of all the other evidence of record, rather than to simply accept
the testimony as true.”

Scanlon v. Astrue, 2013 DNH 088, 15 n.4

(citing SSR 96-7p, Titles II and XVI: Evaluation of Symptoms in
Disability Claims: Assessing the Credibility of an Individual’s
Statements, 1996 WL 374186 (S.S.A. 1996)).

2

Because the only

O’Neill’s motion does not argue that the “mild” effect that
Masewic found her Raynaud’s syndrome to impose upon her
functional capacity would prevent her from doing the fingering
and handling tasks required of her as a secretary. Again,
O’Neill simply does not address Masewic’s opinion.
4

record evidence that O’Neill identifies to support her alleged
disabling manipulative limitations was her own testimony, and the
ALJ supportably found that testimony not to be credible, the
ALJ’s decision not to incorporate those limitations into his RFC
finding was supported by substantial evidence (including
Masewic’s uncontradicted opinion).

See id. at 13-16.

The same conclusion follows, for the same reasons, as to
the ALJ’s finding that, due to O’Neill’s blindness in one eye,
she has “limited depth perception, but she is able to read a
computer screen.”

The ALJ specifically found that this “left eye

impairment does not result in disabling functional limitations,”
relying on O’Neill’s testimony that, while “she has had this
vision loss in her left eye since she was 9 years old . . . [,]
she was able to work as a secretary for many years,” as well as
“to help her son with homework, do some chores around the house,
and read with a magnifying glass.”

The ALJ further relied on

Masewic’s opinion that O’Neill’s “unilateral blindness has only a
minimal effect on functional capacity” (which, as the ALJ noted,
was supported by Masewic’s finding it “difficult to imagine that
[O’Neill] cannot keep a car from driving to the middle of the
road” due to her vision problem--as she had claimed--since “she
would also then ambulate in such a manner”--which she does not).

5

O’Neill’s motion to reverse does not address the ALJ’s
reasoning or point to any contrary evidence aside from her own
testimony (which, again, the ALJ did not find fully credible).
Like his decision not to incorporate any manipulative limitations
into O’Neill’s RFC, then, the ALJ’s decision not to incorporate
any visual limitations, aside from “limited depth perception,”3
is supported by substantial evidence.
Finally, O’Neill argues that the ALJ erred in failing to
address the opinion of a state health department physician that
O’Neill’s migraine headaches amounted to a severe impairment.

As

the ALJ noted in his decision, the agency physician, Dr. Burton
Nault, identified O’Neill’s migraines among other severe
medically determinable impairments--but also found, as the ALJ
also noted, that neither the migraines nor the rest of her
impairments were disabling.

Indeed, in discussing O’Neill’s RFC,

Nault called her migraines “infrequent and short-lived.”
So it is at best unclear what O’Neill means when she says in
her motion that “Nault’s opinion regarding the impact [her]
migraines have on her functional capacity was significant
probative evidence contrary to the ALJ’s determination.”

3

Nault’s

In testimony that O’Neill does not challenge, the
vocational expert specifically stated that O’Neill could do her
past work as a secretary even with “limited left eye depth
perception.”
6

opinion as to O’Neill’s migraines, as the ALJ specifically noted
in his decision, was entirely consistent with his finding that
they did not amount to a disabling impairment.4
For the foregoing reasons, O’Neill’s motion to reverse the
ALJ’s decision5 is DENIED and the Commissioner’s motion to affirm
the ALJ’s decision6 is GRANTED.

The clerk shall enter judgment

accordingly and close the case.
SO ORDERED.

Joseph N. Laplante
United States District Judge

Dated:
cc:

February 20, 2015

Peter K. Marsh, Esq.
T. David Plourde, AUSA

4

Insofar as O’Neill is suggesting that the ALJ erred by not
finding her migraines to be severe, that error, as such, was
harmless, since the ALJ, having identified other severe
impairments, specifically took account of what he found to be
O’Neill’s non-severe headaches in assessing her RFC. See, e.g.,
Santiago v. Astrue, 2013 DNH 048, 5.
5

Document no. 5.

6

Document no. 8.
7