Brian Corcoran Attorney At Law

“Social Security Legal Update”

2008-02-03T20:56:00.000-08:00

In the case of Lingenfelter v. Astrue, 504 F.3d 1028 (9th Cir. 2007) the court held that the Social Security judge failed to provide clear and convincing reasons for finding that the claimant’s alleged pain and symptoms were not credible. The court found that the Social Security judge’s finding that the claimant’s testimony conflicted with the medical opinion in the record ignored the opinion of the claimant’s treating physicians who were supportive of his complaints. The claimant had returned to work for a nine week period of time and the Social Security judge found that the brief return to work was proof that the claimant’s pain was not disabling. The court found, however, that the attempt at unsuccessful return to work due to difficult financial circumstances was not a clear or convincing reason to find that the claimant was not disabled and therefore the Social Security judge was required to include the limitations, suffered by the claimant, and assessing his residual functional capacity. Since the judge failed to make that assessment then his opinion was not supported by substantial evidence and the court noted that the vocational expert testimony that there were no jobs the claimant could perform within the limitations alleged by the claimant was sufficient to award benefits. The claimant, accordingly, was given benefits in that particular case.

It appears to me that the Lingenfelter case is important in not penalizing claimants who attempt to return to work due to the necessity of paying everyday bills such as mortgage payments or light bills. Clearly, an attempt to return to work should not be used to punish the claimant given the existence of dire financial straights.

2008 IRS Mileage Reimbursement Rate

2008-01-04T21:15:00.000-08:00

http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=176030,00.html

IRS Announces 2008 Standard Mileage Rates; Rate for Business Miles Set at 50.5 Cents per Mile

WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service today issued the 2008 optional standard mileage rates used to calculate the deductible costs of operating an automobile for business, charitable, medical or moving purposes.

Beginning Jan. 1, 2008, the standard mileage rates for the use of a car (including vans, pickups or panel trucks) will be: 50.5 cents per mile for business miles driven;
19 cents per mile driven for medical or moving purposes;
14 cents per mile driven in service of charitable organizations.

The new rate for business miles compares to a rate of 48.5 cents per mile for 2007. The new rate for medical and moving purposes compares to 20 cents in 2007. The rate for miles driven in service of charitable organizations has remained the same.

The standard mileage rate for business is based on an annual study of the fixed and variable costs of operating an automobile; the standard rate for medical and moving purposes is based on the variable costs as determined by the same study. Runzheimer International, an independent contractor, conducted the study for the IRS.

The mileage rate for charitable miles is set by law.

A taxpayer may not use the business standard mileage rate for a vehicle after using any depreciation method under the Modified Accelerated Cost Recovery System (MACRS), after claiming a Section 179 deduction for that vehicle, for any vehicle used for hire or for more than four vehicles used simultaneously.

2007-12-05T13:45:00.000-08:00

Words v. Definitions

Forward to Fifth Edition of Cochran's Law Lexicon

When we use a law lexicon, we ought to consider what some of the wise members of the legal profession, who have gone before us, have had to say about dictionaries and words. Justice Robert H. Jackson said that a dictionary was the last resort of the baffled judge. Justice Lucius Q. C. Lamar said that words are the common signs that mankind make use of to declare their intention to one another. Perhaps the most foreboding statement about words was by Lord William Mansfield:

"Most of the disputes in the world arise from words."

Lord Mansfield's statement should be a warning to people who write dictionaries, and persons who use them should also consider the advice of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.:

"A word generally has several meanings, even in the dictionary. You have to
consider the sentence in which it stands to decide which of those meanings it
bears in the particular case, and very likely will see that it there has a shade
of significance more refined than any given in the wordbook."

Similarly, Judge Learned Hand said that words are chameleons, which reflect the color of their environment. At another time he developed the same theme to a greater degree:

"Of course it is true that the words used, even in their literal sense, are the
primary,and ordinarily the most reliable, source of interpreting the meaning of
any writing: be it a statute, a contract, or anything else. But it is one of the
surest indexes of a mature and developed jurisprudence not to make a fortress
out of the dictionary; but to remember that statutes always have some purpose or
object to accomplish, whose sympathetic and imaginative discovery is the surest
guide to their meaning."

Perhaps one of the best known statements concerning this very point was from Justice Holmes, when he argued that it was not necessarily true that the word, "income", means the same thing in the Constitution and in a statute:

"...A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged, it is the skin of a
living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the
circumstances and the time in which it is used."

It is the character of human language that no word conveys to the mind one single definite idea in all situations. Almost all written work contains words which, if taken in their rigorous sense, would convey a meaning different from that which is obviously intended. In law and elsewhere, words of many-hued meanings derive their scope from the use to which they are put. Words express whatever meaning convention has attached to them.