Patrick Balsamo v. Shirley S. Chater, Commissioner of Social Security

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• explaining that an ALJ’s decision to reject a medical opinion must be based on other medical evidence and not the ALJ’s lay judgment
• remanding for benefits based on errors at step five and where application had been pending for four years
• “[I]t is well-settled that the ALJ cannot arbitrarily substitute his own judgment for competent medical opinion.”
• “[A]n ALJ is free . . . to choose between properly submitted medical opinions[.]’”
• an “ALJ cannot arbitrarily substitute his own judgment for 15 competent medical opinion”
• “In the absence of a medical opinion to support [an] ALJ’s finding as to [a claimant’s] ability to perform [a certain level of] work, it is well-settled that the ALJ cannot arbitrarily substitute his own judgment for competent medical opinion.”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).