Reynaldo Israel v. Michael Astrue

MEMORANDUM

Appellant Reynaldo Israel, Jr., challenges the district court’s judgment upholding the Commissioner of Social Security’s denial of his application for social security disability benefits.

Israel suggests three theories to reverse the Administrative Law Judge’s (ALJ) decision: 1) that the ALJ improperly rejected views of examining psychologists while crediting views of non-examining doctors when assessing disability; 2) that the ALJ erred because he did not adequately include his own step-3 finding that Israel has moderate difficulties in concentration, persistence, or pace in his residual functional capacity (RFC) finding and vocational hypothetical at steps 4 and 5; and 3) that the ALJ committed reversible error by not individually weighing and commenting on each limitation checked by Dr. Harrison in Section I of her Mental Residual Function Capacity Assessment.

We address first the ALJ’s rejection of opinions of examining psychologists Drs. John McRae, Ph.D., and Mary Mangione-Lambie, Ph.D., in favor of the views expressed by non-examining physicians Drs. Leslie Postovoit, Ph.D., and Kristine Harrison, Psy.D. The controlling principle is that although an examining…