Frohm

MEMORANDUM **

Jan Peter Frohm appeals from the district court’s affirmance of a decision by an Administrative Law Judge (“ALJ”) denying him disability insurance benefits. Because the ALJ reached his conclusion by applying a standard regarding subjective complaints of pain wholly at odds with Ninth Circuit precedent of which he was aware, and because the ALJ further made his credibility determinations by applying an equally inappropriate legal standard, we vacate and remand for a new hearing before a different ALJ.

Frohm’s claim rests upon objective medical evidence showing severe back impairments and subjective complaints of pain that, he asserts, resulted from those impairments and was so severe as to render him unable to work. Under our cases, a claimant such as Frohm must “produce medical evidence of an underlying impairment which is reasonably likely to be the cause of the alleged pain.” Bunnell v. Sullivan, 947 F.2d 341, 343 (9th Cir.1991) (en banc). He need not, however, produce objective “medical findings that support the severity of pain.” Id. The lack of such findings do not constitute a sufficient basis for rejecting a claimant’s testimony regarding the severity of his…