Michigan District Court Reverses ALJ

In this case, referred by another attorney, the magistrate judge had recommended a ruling against us, but we were able to convince the District Court not to adopt the recommendation. This rarely happens, but it happened again to me for the fourth time this year. Essentially, the bottom line issue in this case was that the evidence supported mental limitations which the ALJ did not adopt, or adequately explain their rejection. The problem in this case was that, for whatever reason, the claimant was not in mental health treatment, but her very long time PCP had been prescribing medications and made observations at least sufficient enough to establish step 2 severity and, therefore, mental limitations. The District Court overruled the magistrate judge on the basis that the MJ had conflated the step 2 analysis with the step 4 analysis, and remanded for reconsideration of the claimant’s mental impairments.