Mingo Logan Coal Co. v. Owens

• Decision Date: 31 July 2013
• Docket Number: No. 11–2418.,11–2418.
• Parties: MINGO LOGAN COAL COMPANY, Petitioner, v. Erma Jean OWENS, widow of Dallas R. Owens; Director, Office of Workers' Compensation Programs, United States Department of Labor, Respondents.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

724 F.3d 550

MINGO LOGAN COAL COMPANY, Petitioner,

v.Erma Jean OWENS, widow of Dallas R. Owens; Director, Office of Workers' Compensation Programs, United States Department of Labor, Respondents.

No. 11–2418.

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.

Argued: March 21, 2013.

Decided: July 31, 2013.

ARGUED:William Steele Mattingly, Jackson Kelly, PLLC, Morgantown, West Virginia, for Petitioner. John Crawford Cline, Piney View, West Virginia; Sarah Marie Hurley, United States Department of Labor, Washington, D.C., for Respondents. ON BRIEF:Ashley M. Harman, Jeffrey R. Soukup, Jackson Kelly, PLLC, Morgantown, West Virginia, for Petitioner. M. Patricia Smith, Solicitor of Labor, Rae Ellen James, Associate Solicitor, Sean G. Bajkowski, Counsel for Appellate Litigation, United States Department of Labor, Washington, D.C., for Federal Respondent.

Before NIEMEYER, DAVIS, and DIAZ, Circuit Judges.

Petition for review denied by published opinion. Judge NIEMEYER wrote the opinion, in which Judge DAVIS and Judge DIAZ joined. Judge NIEMEYER wrote a separate concurring opinion.

NIEMEYER, Circuit Judge:

After nearly 30 years of coal mine employment, Dallas Owens became totally disabled because of breathing difficulties, and in April 2008, he filed a claim for black lung benefits. An Administrative Law Judge (“ALJ”) found that Owens' claim triggered the rebuttable presumption for benefits under 30 U.S.C. § 921(c)(4), available to miners who are totally disabled and have worked 15 years or more in underground coal mines, and that Mingo Logan Coal Company, Owens' former employer, failed to rebut the presumption. The ALJ therefore awarded benefits to Owens, and the Benefits Review Board affirmed.

On appeal, Mingo Logan contends that the ALJ and the Board applied the wrong legal standard in evaluating whether it had met its rebuttal burden, erroneously limiting it to the two methods that the text of the statute specifies are the only means by which the Secretary may rebut the presumption. See30 U.S.C. § 921(c)(4) (providing, “The Secretary may rebut such presumption only by establishing that (A) such miner does not, or did not, have pneumoconiosis, or that (B) his respiratory or pulmonary impairment did not arise out of, or in connection with, employment in a coal mine”). Mingo Logan contends that limiting it to these two methods of rebuttal violated not only the clear language of § 921(c)(4), which makes the rebuttal limitations applicable to the Secretary, but also the Supreme Court's holding in Usery v. Turner Elkhorn Mining Co., 428 U.S. 1, 35, 96 S.Ct. 2882, 49 L.Ed.2d 752 (1976) (construing the statute to place no limitations on the means by which an employer may satisfy its burden on rebuttal).

Both Owens and the Director of the Office of Workers' Compensation Programs argue that even though the statute does not, by its terms, limit employers to the two specified methods of rebuttal, logic does, and therefore the ALJ and the Board articulated the correct legal standard.

We do not reach Mingo Logan's challenge to the standard announced by the Board to rebut the § 921(c)(4) presumption of entitlement to benefits, because we conclude that the ALJ did not in fact apply rebuttal limitations to Mingo Logan, and the Board affirmed the ALJ's analysis. Because we also find that Mingo Logan's other challenges to the ALJ's factual findings lack merit, we affirm the Board's award of benefits. Accordingly, we deny Mingo Logan's petition for review.

I

Owens worked in West Virginia coal mines for close to 30 years, beginning in 1974, and he spent the last 10 of those years working in coal mines as an electrician for Mingo Logan Coal Company. He stopped working in 2003 when he developed difficulty breathing, a problem that got worse with time. In April 2008, Owens filed a claim under the Black LungBenefits Act, which awards benefits to coal miners who are totally disabled due to pneumoconiosis. See30 U.S.C. § 901 et seq. The statute's implementing regulations define the term pneumoconiosis to include not only those diseases medically recognized as pneumoconiosis (“clinical pneumoconiosis”), but also “any chronic lung disease or impairment and its sequelae arising out of coal mine employment” (“legal pneumoconiosis”). 20 C.F.R. § 718.201(a). A claims examiner found that Owens was eligible for benefits and ordered Mingo Logan to pay him $1,048.10 a month. Mingo Logan contested the award and requested a formal hearing with an ALJ. The hearing was conducted on December 9, 2009.

At the hearing, Owens testified about his employment history and his breathing problems, for which he had been prescribed oxygen. He also testified that he had smoked about a quarter of a pack of cigarettes a day when he was in his late teens and early twenties but that he had not smoked since 1965. In addition to Owens' testimony, the parties introduced various forms of medical evidence concerning his condition, including (1) conflicting interpretations of two chest X-rays and three CT scans; (2) the results from pulmonary function tests and arterial blood gas studies; (3) notes of observations from two of his treating physicians, Dr. Maria Boustani and Dr. Oscar Figueroa, indicating that Owens had pneumoconiosis; and (4) conflicting medical opinions from three physicians, Dr. D.L. Rasmussen (offered by the Director), Dr. George Zaldivar (offered by Mingo Logan), and Dr. Kirk Hippensteel (offered by Mingo Logan), all three of whom agreed that Owens was totally disabled by a pulmonary impairment but disagreed as to its diagnosis and cause. Dr. Rasmussen diagnosed Owens as having both clinical pneumoconiosis and interstitial fibrosis and opined that both conditions were attributable to Owens' exposure to coal mine dust. Dr. Zaldivar diagnosed Owens with idiopathic interstitial fibrosis or, in his words, “an interstitial fibrosis of undetermined cause,” but unrelated to coal mining. Dr. Hippensteel essentially reached the same conclusion, opining that Owens' “type of lung disease is a disease of the general public unrelated to his prior coal mine dust exposure” and that he “would be just as impaired by the same pulmonary problem had he never worked in a coal mine.” ^*

In October 2010, the ALJ awarded Owens benefits. She concluded that because Owens had more than 15 years of underground coal mine employment and because the evidence established that he was totally disabled by a respiratory impairment, the rebuttable presumption of § 921(c)(4) arose that he was totally disabled due to pneumoconiosis. The ALJ also found that Mingo Logan did not rebut that presumption. In this respect, the ALJ considered seven interpretations of two chest X-rays, giving more weight to the readings that interpreted the films as positive for pneumoconiosis based on the physicians' relative qualifications. The ALJ also gave greater weight to Dr. Rasmussen's opinion as to the cause of Owens' disability than to the opinions offered by Dr. Zaldivar and Dr. Hippensteel, emphasizing that Dr. Rasmussen's opinion was better supported by the objective medical evidence and “the opinions of two pulmonary experts who treated [Owens],” while Dr. Zaldivar and Dr. Hippensteel “chose to totally eliminate consideration of [Owens'] 29 years of coal dust exposure as a potential environmental factor in the development of his interstitial fibrosis.” The ALJ therefore concluded that “the preponderance of the best documented and reasoned evidence of record establishes the presence of clinical and legal pneumoconiosis.” She also found that Dr. Zaldivar and Dr. Hippensteel's diagnosis of idiopathic interstitial fibrosis was “not sufficient to establish a cause of [Owens'] disability other than [coal workers' pneumoconiosis].” She concluded, at bottom, that Mingo Logan failed to rebut the § 921(c)(4) presumption.

The Benefits Review Board affirmed by a decision and order dated October 28, 2011. The Board concluded that the ALJ's findings were supported by substantial evidence and that the ALJ properly explained her finding that the positive X-ray readings outweighed the negative X-ray readings and “properly found that Dr. Rasmussen's opinion was better documented and reasoned than the opinions of Drs. Zaldivar and Hippensteel.”

Mingo Logan filed this petition for review, challenging both the legal standard applied to its rebuttal evidence, as well as the sufficiency of the analysis and the evidence.

Owens died on July 8, 2012, but his widow continues to pursue his claim on behalf of his estate.

II

Mingo Logan contends that the ALJ and the Benefits Review Board applied the wrong legal standard in assessing whether it rebutted the presumption established by 30 U.S.C. § 921(c)(4). Under § 921(c)(4), if the miner shows that he worked 15 years or more in underground coal mines and that he suffers from a totally disabling respiratory or pulmonary impairment, a rebuttable presumption arises that the miner “is totally disabled due to pneumoconiosis.” In the absence of credible rebuttal evidence, the miner would then be entitled to benefits.

In its opinion affirming the ALJ's award of benefits, the Board stated that Mingo Logan could rebut the § 921(c)(4) presumption only by showing either (1) that Owens did not have pneumoconiosis or (2) that his respiratory or pulmonary impairment did not arise out of, or in connection with, his coal mine employment. In support of this statement, the Board cited the statutory language: “The Secretary may rebut such presumption only by establishing that (A) such miner does not, or did not, have pneumoconiosis, or that (B) his respiratory or pulmonary impairment did not arise out of, or in connection with, employment in a coal mine.” 30 U.S.C. § 921(c)(4).

Mingo Logan argues that the Board improperly applied to it the rebuttal limitationsof § 921(c)(4) even though the plain text shows that those limitations apply only when the “Secretary” seeks to rebut the presumption. S...