Virginia District Court Reverses ALJ

April 16, 2015. In this case, the Appeals Council had rejected in one boilerplate sentence 150 pages of medical records as not being “material” to the ALJ’s decision, despite the fact that the missing evidence (which the claimant’s previous representative had explained to the ALJ she was having difficulty getting, and had asked for additional time after the hearing to obtain it – – which the ALJ denied) was relied upon in part in the ALJ’s decision as a basis to find that the claimant’s complaints were not credible. We successfully argued that the evidence were material and, in fact, SSA agreed voluntarily to remand the case to consider the evidence.