Claimant Awarded $80,000 Following Remand.

April 17, 2015. In this case, this Maryland claimant obtained a fully favorable decision from the ALJ following a remand in which we successfully argued that the ALJ had improperly rejected the retrospective opinion of a longtime treating source that the claimant’s medical impairments predated the physicians actual treatment of the claimant, even though the claimant did not begin seeing the physician until after his date last insured. On remand the ALJ scheduled a medical expert to testify at the hearing, who confirmed that the claimant’s muscular sclerosis is historically a difficult condition to diagnose (essentially, a “diagnosis of exclusion”) and that the opinion of the treating neurologist was a reasonable one based on his review of the record; the ALJ ruled in his favor from the bench.