From a local television station that prefers to hide its call letters:
A local veteran, fighting for disability benefits, says he should have an answer in his case by now. In fact, he's already waited the three months they told him it would take. ...
Alvie Roach says he has been working for just shy of seven years to file and appeal his disability claims. ...
He had his last hearing in early January, well before COVID-19 closures were put into place. His decision expected within three months. ...
But now were hitting almost four months of waiting, and still no word on that decision. Alvie says when he tried to investigate with the his lawyer's help, he found the judge actually filed a decision the day after his hearing. So, why won't anyone tell him what happened. ...
I have not seen or heard of increased delays in getting out decisions after hearings so I expect this is at most a localized problem. Decision writing is the part of the process that's least likely to be delayed because of working at home.
I don't think the judge "filed" the decision the day after the hearing. More likely the Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) put it in a decision writing queue and there's some delay there. While the ALJ may have made up his or her mind, nothing is cast in stone until the final sign off. Sometimes, perhaps not often enough, a decision writer gets back to the ALJ basically to ask "Are you sure about this?" Sometimes the ALJ changes his or her mind. Some delay on this account isn't necessarily a bad thing. My experience is that a little unexpected delay is a bad sign. The claimant is likely to be denied. A lot of unexpected delay, on the other hand, is either a neutral sign or perhaps even a favorable sign. I hold my breath in these cases.
Also, the seven years part is unusual. The most common explanation when that happens is that the claimant failed to appeal an unfavorable decision and then let years elapse before filing a new claim. There are very few cases which are aggressively pursued for seven years. I've had some but not many.
14 comments:
"More likely the ALJ put it in a decision writing queue and there's some delay there."
That's actually probably one of the least likely possibilities at the moment. Far more likely the ALJ put it in post-hearing development status, perhaps because the claimant's representative said the record was incomplete, and nothing has happened to trigger a change in status.
No explanation for it, but our office is seeing something similar frequently. Decisions show on attorney's status report but no decision in the electronic case file or mailed to claimant or attorney. In most cases, a call to the hearing office resolves the issue in a week or so. Any idea what is causing it? This is a problem we did not see before the telephone at-home hearings.
@10:43. Or the ALJ determined a CE was necessary and the case can't go to one with a pandemic.
The hearing decisions have just gotten longer. When I started around 2006, I usually told clients about 1-2 months to get the decision. Now, I tell them 2-3 months or more. I have seen some take around 6-8 months but that is extremely rare.
I have not seen any more delay because of the coronavirus. And yes, I have seen it take like 3-4 years from start to finish but never 7 years on 1 application. Maybe there was a remand.
There is literally zero chance that there is a claim that has waited for 7 years. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Even if there was an appeal to Federal court that remanded the case back to the ALJ, no way it has gone on for 7 years.
My favorite fact pattern. Claimant, who has no real understanding of the processes of the hearing office, and is understandably frustrated/anxious about getting a decision, contacts local investigative reporter. He provides his lay statement of facts. Reporter, who is equally ignorant if not more so about SSA policy, procedures, etc., calls SSA to get an explanation. SSA, due to an inability to comment on specific cases to reporters, gives a generic statement. Investigative reporter writes an outrage piece using minimal facts and knowledge. Piece gets posted here despite the extremely limited amount of information obtained or provided.
@12:05 PM
Perhaps your particular hearing office is having issues, but your experience is far from the norm. In most cases decisions are being issued within a few days to a couple weeks after the hearing is concluded (except where outstanding records are needed). The days of writing backlogs are long gone.
@1:11 PM
I don't know where @12:05 is located, but in my location 3-4 month wait times are pretty common as well. Before the COVID-19 closures they were trending to 1-2 months, but almost never "a couple of weeks." So I do think it's more widespread than people realize. Fact is, some offices are faster than others. It may simply be that they have better staffing levels and more experienced staff.
The longest Social Security case I have handled lasted for 19 years. The case started in 1991 and ended in 2010. It ended successfully. This was a once in a lifetime case involving a client whose benefits had been cut off. He was not originally represented. I first took the case to the District Court and won a remand. The case went back and forth between the Federal Courts and the administration. The client had something like 7 hearings, three trips to Federal District Court and one to the Appeals Court. For some reason SSA kept paying the client. After many years they decided he owed an over payment of over $100,000.00. Social Security "offered" to settle for $50,000.00 and the client declined because the case was in the Federal Court again. The Court Remanded it, he had a 7th hearing and the ALJ decided that he was disabled during the entire time involved. I earned EAJA Fees several times, I filed a Fee Petition and received the largest fee of my Social Security Disability career.
I currently have a case that has lasted 18 years. I was not involved with it at the beginning and I am the client's 5th attorney. That case involves a claimant who was found disabled for SSI and not for SSD. I think there is only 3 months difference in the DLI and the SSI onset date. I have been involved in this case for 5 years. I have represented him at three hearings. The last hearing involved an ALJ finding that he was never disabled. Again, for some reason SSA continued to pay the SSI to the client. Recently, the Appeals Council remanded the case on Lucia grounds as well as a number of other issues. It appears like the Appeals Council looked at the briefs and file because the Appeals Council rulings on the other issues have put the case in a nice box for the claimant.
Finally, I have had about a dozen cases lasting ten years or so. I currently have two of those type of cases now. All of these lengthy cases end up being successful in one way or the other. The clients stick with me because I stick with them.
There can be complex litigation in the field of Social Security Disability law.
Anon 4:03 Wow good recap. I was assuming we were talking about 7 hours from 1 initial application. I doubt it would take that long.
Are you in California. I have been fighting for my daughter who suffered a mild tbi in 2012 who now has mood cognitive and behavior issues, changes personality, problems with speech, remembering and a few more. It’s been a circus with most of the Ssa reps.
I am the poster with the 19 year case. I am not in California. The taxes are too high for me there.
It can easily take 3-4 months if the case got shipped to a slow crappy writer in a writing unit and the ALJ had to send it back a time or two to get a "minimally legally sufficient" case back.
It can also easily take 3 to 4 months if an ALJ gives particularly crappy instructions that don't jive with the evidence resulting in several ALJ advisement sessions, just saying 1120
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