Lauretta L. Dobbins v. Richard Schweiker, Secretary of Health and Human Services

The sole question before this Court is whether the Secretary’s decision denying benefits under the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969, as amended by the Black Lung Benefits Act of 1972 (Act), 30 U.S.C. § 901 et seq., was supported by substantial evidence that Dobbins failed to marshal sufficient evidence to establish the existence of a total disability. We find that it was not and reverse.

Elbert Dobbins was a northern Alabama coal miner. He married the plaintiff-appellant in 1917. One morning in June, 1926, he was killed at the mine. He had been seated on tracks upon which loaded coal hoppers traveled, and was crushed when he could not scramble to safety from an onrushing coal car. Mrs. Dobbins, a seventy-nine year old widow who has never remarried, now seeks widow’s benefits under the Act. §§ 411(a) and 412(a)(2) of the Act, 30 U.S.C. §§ 921 (a) and 922(a)(2). Mrs. Dobbins would be eligible for benefits if at the time of her husband’s death, he was “totally disabled,” as defined by the Act, from pneumoconiosis. Pneumoconiosis, known to laymen as black lung, is a chronic dust-caused malady which ultimately creates a totally disabling respiratory or pulmonary…