United States District Court, D. Arizona
Brian S. Sharp, Plaintiff,
v.
Commissioner of Social Security Administration, Defendant.
ORDER
DOMINIC W. LANZA UNITED SLATES DISTRICT JUDGE
Plaintiff
Brian S. Sharp (“Sharp”) has moved for
reconsideration (Doc. 20) of the Court's March 5, 2019
Order (Doc. 17) finding reversible error by the ALJ and
remanding his case for further proceedings. Sharp asks the
Court to remand for an award of benefits. For the following
reasons, the Court denies the motion.
DISCUSSION
I.
Legal Standard
The
Court has discretion to reconsider and vacate a prior order.
Barber v. Hawaii, 42 F.3d 1185, 1198 (9th Cir.
1994). However, motions for reconsideration are generally
disfavored and should be denied “absent a showing of
manifest error or a showing of new facts or legal authority
that could not have been brought to [the Court's]
attention earlier with reasonable diligence.” LRCiv.
7.2(g). Indeed, reconsideration is an “extraordinary
remedy” that is available only in “highly unusual
circumstances.” Kona Enters., Inc. v. Estate of
Bishop, 229 F.3d 877, 890 (9th Cir. 2000) (citations
omitted). Accordingly, a motion for reconsideration
“may not be used to raise arguments or present
evidence for the first time when they could reasonably have
been raised earlier in the litigation.” Id.
(emphasis in original).
II.
Analysis
The
motion for reconsideration contains citations to an array of
Social Security cases in which courts remanded to the ALJ for
an award of benefits (as opposed to remanding for further
proceedings). (Doc. 20 at 3-6.) Sharp contends he was unable
to submit these authorities “before the rationale
expressed in the Order remanding for further administrative
proceedings.” (Id. at 7.)
This
contention lacks merit. Sharp argued in his opening brief,
and again in his reply, that the Court should remand for an
award of benefits. (Doc. 13 at 19-22; Doc. 15 at 4.) He also
cited Rawa v. Colvin, 672 Fed. App'x 664 (9th
Cir. 2016), as a case supporting his position. (Doc. 13 at
20.) The motion for reconsideration, which also discusses
Rawa, simply constitutes an attempt to provide
additional case law in support of this argument. This is
improper under LRCiv. 7.2(g)(1), which provides that
“[n]o motion for reconsideration of an Order may repeat
any oral or written argument made by the movant in support of
or in opposition to the motion that resulted in the
Order.” The reconsideration request also fails on the
merits. Sharp cites unpublished Ninth Circuit cases and
several district court cases for the proposition that
“[r]emand for further proceedings is not needed because
there are no medical opinions in the record to support a
finding of disability, so long as a claimant has established
medically determinable impairments that may reasonably be
expected to result in the reported symptoms.” (Doc. 20
at 3-6.) But Sharp ignores clearly established Ninth Circuit
case law providing that, “[w]hen the ALJ denies
benefits and the court finds error, the court ordinarily must
remand to the agency for further proceedings before directing
an award of benefits.” Leon v. Berryhill, 880
F.3d 1041, 1045 (9th Cir. 2017). Only in rare circumstances,
then, should the court remand for an award of benefits. The
appropriate rule, as indicated in the Court's Order, is
the credit-as-true rule. Moreover, the Ninth Circuit has
noted that courts are required “to remand for further
proceedings when, even though all conditions of the
credit-as-true rule are satisfied, an evaluation of the
record as a whole creates serious doubt that a claimant is,
in fact, disabled.” Garrison v. Colvin, 759
F.3d 995, 1021 (9th Cir. 2014) (citing Connett v.
Barnhart, 340 F.3d 871 (9th Cir. 2003)); see also
Treichler v. Comm'r of Soc. Sec. Admin., 775 F.3d
1090, 1105 (9th Cir. 2014) (“Where . . . an ALJ makes a
legal error, but the record is uncertain and ambiguous, the
proper approach is to remand the case to the agency.”).
Here,
as the Court found when applying the credit-as-true rule,
“administrative proceedings would arguably serve a
useful purpose, ” because “[o]ther than
Sharp's testimony, there is little evidence in the record
indicating that Sharp's atrial fibrillation is
disabling.” (Doc. 17 at 10-11.) The Court also applied
Garrison and found “the record as a whole
‘creates serious doubt that [Sharp] is, in fact
disabled'” because “no medical opinions in
the record suggest Sharp is incapable of working.”
(Id. at 11, citing Garrison, 759 F.3d at
1021.) Sharp does not seem to dispute the Court's factual
conclusions regarding the lack of any supporting evidence in
the record. He simply cites nonbinding cases, with different
facts, in which courts reached a different outcome. The Court
is not required to follow such cases, particularly where the
scope-of-remand decision is discretionary. Cf. Leon v.
Berryhill, 880 F.3d 1041, 1045 (9th Cir. 2017)
(“Even if [the court] reach[es] the third step and
credit[s] the claimant's testimony as true, it is within
the court's discretion either to make a direct award of
benefits or to remand for further proceedings.”).
Accordingly,
IT IS ORDERED that Sharp's motion for
...