Edward Amely, Sr. v. Commissioner of Social Security

[DO NOT PUBLISH]
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
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No. 20-13976
Non-Argument Calendar
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D.C. Docket No. 8:19-cv-01650-AEP
EDWARD AMELY, SR.,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
versus
COMMISSIONER OF SOCIAL SECURITY,
Defendant-Appellee.
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Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Middle District of Florida
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(May 4, 2021)
Before NEWSOM, BRANCH, and GRANT, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
Edward Amely, Sr. appeals the district court’s order denying his motion to
remand to the Commissioner to consider new evidence. Because the new evidence
is not material to the administrative law judge’s decision, we affirm.
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I.
Amely applied for disability benefits in 2016, alleging an onset of disability
of June of that year. His claims were denied at the initial and reconsideration
levels, so he requested a hearing before an administrative law judge. The
administrative law judge held a hearing and then issued a written decision in
December 2018 finding that Amely was not disabled. The Appeals Council denied
Amely’s request for review, and he filed an action in district court. There, Amely
filed a motion for remand under “sentence six” of 42 U.S.C. § 405(g); he
contended that a subsequent award of Supplemental Security Income and a May
2019 consultative examination performed by Dr. Thomas G. Trimmer constituted
new evidence that would have affected the earlier adverse decision. The district
court denied his motion, explaining that the award letter in and of itself was not
new evidence that would change the administrative result and that Dr. Trimmer’s
report did not relate back to the period at issue. This appeal followed.
II.
We review the district court’s determination of whether to remand based on
new evidence de novo. Vega v. Comm’r of Soc. Sec., 265 F.3d 1214, 1218 (11th
Cir. 2001).
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III.
The sixth sentence of 42 U.S.C. § 405(g) permits courts to remand an
application for benefits back to the Social Security Administration for further
action. A claimant must establish that: (1) there is new, noncumulative evidence,
(2) the evidence is material, and (3) there is good cause for the failure to submit
that evidence at the administrative level. Hunter v. Soc. Sec. Admin., Comm’r, 808
F.3d 818, 821 (11th Cir. 2015). Evidence is material if it is relevant and probative
such that there is a reasonable possibility that it would change the administrative
result. See Washington v. Soc. Sec. Admin., Comm’r, 806 F.3d 1317, 1321 (11th
Cir. 2015).
The district court did not err in concluding that Dr. Trimmer’s 2019 report
was not relevant and probative to the administrative law judge’s decision. To be
sure, evidence of Amely’s memory functioning at the time of the administrative
law judge’s decision would have been material—the administrative law judge
specifically found that there was no severe limitation in Amely’s ability to
remember information, so evidence from the relevant time period could rebut that
finding. See id. at 1322–23. But Dr. Trimmer’s evaluation was conducted months
after the administrative law judge’s decision, and there is no indication that the
report related back to the period that was adjudicated. Although Dr. Trimmer
noted that Amely “reportedly has had some memory problems” going back to
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2016, he did not state that he had reviewed any of Amely’s previous records or that
his opinions related back to the period before the decision. See id. at 1322. In fact,
Dr. Trimmer did not even comment on the cause of Amely’s memory issues or if
Amely had been suffering from those issues at the time of the decision. Moreover,
the report stated that the memory testing results were an accurate estimate of
Amely’s current level of functioning; the results gave no indication about his
functioning from before that time.
Amely contends that the subsequent favorable decision in 2019 suggests that
Dr. Trimmer’s report was chronologically relevant. But that award simply stated
that Amely was found disabled as of January 31, 2019; it did not state that Amely
was disabled because of memory issues, that Dr. Trimmer’s report had any impact
on the award, or that Amely was disabled in 2018. The mere fact that Amely was
found disabled in January 2019 does not make Dr. Trimmer’s examination findings
material to an earlier decision. See id. In short, even if the administrative law
judge had this new evidence, there is not a reasonable possibility that the decision
would have been different. See 42 U.S.C. § 405(g); see also Hunter, 808 F.3d at
821.
AFFIRMED.
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