Foster v. Ribicoff

• Decision Date: 22 June 1962
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 3055.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of South Carolina
• Parties: Mamie W. FOSTER, Plaintiff, v. Abraham RIBICOFF, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare of the United States of America, Defendant.

206 F. Supp. 99

Mamie W. FOSTER, Plaintiff, v. Abraham RIBICOFF, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare of the United States of America, Defendant.

Civ. A. No. 3055.

United States District Court W. D. South Carolina, Spartanburg Division.

June 22, 1962.

Moore & Stoddard, Spartanburg, S. C., for plaintiff.

John C. Williams, U. S. Atty., Charles Porter, Asst. U. S. Atty., Greenville, S. C., for defendant.

WYCHE, Chief Judge.

This case is before me upon the complaint of the plaintiff seeking a review of the final decision of the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, in accordance with 205(g) of the Social Security Act, 42 U.S.C.A. § 405(g), holding that plaintiff was not entitled to a period of disability and disability insurance benefits.

The plaintiff filed applications to establish a period of disability and for disability insurance benefits on April 30, 1960, alleging that she became unable to work on December 1, 1959. A hearing was held before a Hearing Examiner of the Social Security Administration, who rendered his decision on June 22, 1961, finding that the claimant was entitled to a period of disability and to disability insurance benefits. However, the Hearing Examiner did not make a finding as to the specific date when the claimant became disabled. The Appeals Council on its own motion reviewed the Hearing Examiner's decision and in a decision dated October 30, 1961, reversed the decision of the Hearing Examiner finding "that the claimant's impairments could not be expected to prevent her continuously from engaging in any substantial gainful activities from December 1, 1959, as alleged, or from any time thereafter through the 3-month period following the date she filed her application on April 13, 1960."

Plaintiff was born August 4, 1901. She completed four years of formal schooling; she has worked continuously as a spinner in a cotton mill for forty-five years, at the same mill for thirty-five years, except for short absences when her two children were born, and a two-month period when she was absent on account of her deteriorating physical condition; when she tried to go back to work she was told that she was not physically able to be reemployed. Plaintiff is a very industrious person evidenced by the fact that from the time of her marriage, very early in life, until recent years, in addition to working in the mill, she performed, without outside assistance, her duties as a housewife and mother, while caring for her aged mother. The employment of the plaintiff has been confined exclusively to the textile industry as a spinner which required considerable physical exertion, working near moving machinery, dexterity in handling materials, and in feeding or operating machines to spin, wind, finish, weave or knit textile fibers. She has not had any training for any other type of employment and her physician testified that in his opinion, considering plaintiff's age and physical condition, it would be impossible, if not fatal, to try to rehabilitate or train plaintiff for other employment.

During the month of February, 1960, a qualified ophthalmologist, examined plaintiff's left eye which was as he stated "a red, very painful eye" which she had been suffering with for about two weeks; she was admitted to the hospital and an iridectomy to the left eye was performed; the doctor stated as his opinion that "she has an absolute glaucoma on the left eye with complete blindness in which there is no further treatment as far as sight is concerned; and that "that eye is gone"; that vision in her right eye is 20/30 with correction; that this disability is "total and permanent". Plaintiff's personal physician testified that plaintiff first came to see him in December, 1959, that his diagnosis at that time was arteriosclerosis with hypertension and osteoarthritis; that she has been under his care since that time; that medicine does not lower her blood pressure, that 170 is the lowest he has ever found it to be; she suffers with dizziness, headaches, swelling of the joints from the neck down to the knees, and shortness of breath upon the slightest exertion; and that in his opinion her ailments are permanent and total.

Plaintiff's household activities are restricted to a little cleaning and dish-washing and straightening of beds, which she has to interrupt in order to take periods of rest. She is a widow and lives with her married daughter.

Each and every claimant under the Social Security Act is entitled to have his or her case considered in the light of the individual, particular facts and circumstances surrounding such a claim. The very wording of Section 223 of the Social Security Act, 42 U.S.C.A. § 423, makes the point most strongly that each case and each person must be considered individually. That section sets forth that "every individual" who meets the requirements and is under a disability shall be entitled to a disability insurance benefit. The act is concerned not with a standard man of ordinary and customary abilities, but with the particular person who may claim its benefits and the effect of the impairment upon that person, with whatever abilities or inabilities he has. Thus, if a medically determinable physical impairment exists, the court should consider whether such impairment prevents the particular plaintiff from engaging in any substantial gainful activity for which he is qualified, and to that end may consider his education, training, and experience, as well as the nature and extent of the impairment itself.

Nowhere does there appear in the act any reference to a requirement of "total disability". The official interpretation of this phrase as presented to Congress by representatives of the Department of Health, Education and...