Claimant Awarded $120,000 Following Remand

April 11, 2015. We were able to obtain a remand for this claimant about six months ago in the Eastern District of Michigan based upon a flawed step 4 finding that claimant he could perform his past work as actually performed, and where the ALJ had failed to obtain any vocational expert testimony with respect to whether the job was performed differently as generally performed. In particular, the ALJ asked the claimant one or two questions at the hearing about his past job in the auto industry, and relied upon those two answers to find that the claimant’s past work was light work as actually performed, without considering the expanded explanation the claimant had provided on the Work History Report. On remand we had obtained a vocational report which 1) opined that the claimant’s past work as actually performed was medium and, significantly, 2) that this was also how the job was performed generally, contrary to the DOT description. Once the vocational expert at the hearing readily agreed that the job was medium AAP and AGP, the ALJ found in the claimant’s favor with a slight modification of the onset date. Since the claimant’s was awarded benefits with an AOD of March 2010 and a PIA of over $2000 per month, he will receive approximately $120,000 in PDBs.