Victoria MANSO-PIZARRO, Plaintiff, Appellant, v. SECRETARY OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, Defendant, Appellee

How courts have described this case

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

• holding that “unreadable entries may 20 have some import” and “it is the duty of the ALJ, on remand, to make some effort 1 to decipher them”
• holding that “an ALJ can only make the required RFC assessment without supportive expert opinion where the evidence shows a ‘relatively mild physical impairment posing, to the layperson’s eye, no significant restrictions’”
• holding that, where the claimant had a complicated medical record involving hospital stays, tests, and multiple diagnoses, the ALJ erred by making a residual functional capacity assessment without any “analysis of functional capacity by a physician or other expert”
• noting that findings of the Commissioner of Social Security as to fact shall be conclusive if supported by substantial evidence
• explaining that “the question whether substantial evidence supports” the ALJ’s RFC finding “depends on a qualitative assessment of the medical evidence that was before the ALJ”
• explaining that generally, “an ALJ, as a lay person, is not qualified to interpret raw data in a medical record” unless a “commonsense judgment” can be made “without a physician’s involvement”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).