NOTE: This piece first appeared on FLGulfNews.com.
By Dick LaFontaine
Appeals Council Puts Judge on Notice
Appeals officials are repeatedly slapping down the decisions of a Social Security disability judge in Florida, raising alarm about his handling of cases. Judge Ryan Johannes, an administrative law judge in Fort Myers, has seen an unusually large share of his unfavorable rulings corrected by the Social Security Appeals Council.
That council – a panel of judges reviewing appealed cases – has vacated or reversed many of Johannes’s denials, an extraordinary step meant for clear errors. Internal data show that in one recent period, the Appeals Council remanded 16 cases and outright reversed 2 of Johannes’s decisions.
In other words, over one in five of his rulings that reached the council were deemed so flawed that they had to be fixed. “This review is extremely limited,” the Social Security Administration (SSA) itself cautions – the Appeals Council will only upset a hearing judge’s decision if the judge “has clearly not followed the rules” for weighing evidence…