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Post by johnthornton on Jul 19, 2009 17:39:17 GMT -5
I don't know much about MySpace, but most people on Facebook keep their profiles private--with access only given to their "Friends." I don't how an ALJ would be able to access it--unless he/she sent a "friend request" to the claimant. Now, THAT would be a REALLY bad idea.
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Post by professor on Jul 20, 2009 10:30:42 GMT -5
It seems to me that if the record is so sparse that you feel compelled to search out facebook and myspace, then the better answer is to develop the record more through official channels, not troll the internet in hopes of finding information.
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June
Member
Posts: 23
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Post by June on Jul 21, 2009 11:02:47 GMT -5
You're kidding about the FB/Myspace, right? I agree with the Prof. Your decision should be based on the administrative record before you. And what does having a FB/Myspace account prove? Can you really show 8hours a day 5 day a week? You really wouldn't base your entire credibility determination on this one issue...
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June
Member
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Post by June on Jul 21, 2009 11:13:11 GMT -5
Last I checked you don't have to be dead to get disability.
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Post by valkyrie on Jul 21, 2009 15:56:52 GMT -5
The facebook/myspace idea is extremely bad not only for the independent investigation aspect, but also because those sites can't be accessed from the SSA internet access. Putting the pages into record would be admitting that you took the claimant's information out of the office and entered it into a non-SSA computer. Muy malo!
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Post by Propmaster on Jul 23, 2009 12:03:03 GMT -5
OK, I'll bite. I don't think an ALJ should be checking the claimants' Facebook or MySpace pages. The ALJ is supposed to make his/her decision based on information contained in the record. (Are you adding the facebook page to the record as an exhibit?) I had heard of another judge asking the claimant about his / her online activities as an indication they can do work. I plan on using the info only to ask the claimant about his or her activities. If he /she lies, I may introduce the pages or continue that hearing and give them to counsel. I'm LITERALLY flabbergasted. My flabber is so gasted that I've choked on it. It didn't seem like you were joking, but I hoped you were, but it turns out you're not. It is one thing to ask a claimant about online activities - not TOO relevant, but possibly useful for carpal tunnel or illiteracy claims. Asking claimants things is questioning them, is part of adducing evidence. What you described - drawing conclusions from webpages you ASSUME are owned and/or maintained by the claimant; drawing conclusions about the date the information is provided and/or the accuracy of it in terms of online socialization (maybe they don't WANT their old friends to know they had a nervous breakdown) - is so far beyond the pale that I'm still gasting flabber as I write this. Please, please, please stop this and any other independent investigation. I find it hard with all the complaints by sitting ALJs of inability to review all of their evidence in prep for hearings to believe that you are not using time for these searches that should more reasonably be spent looking through MEDICAL RECORDS. There are a couple cases in my jurisdiction about an ALJ asking ex parte questions of the security guard at ODAR about what the claimant did in the waiting room. That was FROWNED on, to say the least. And, frankly, you are exhibiting an unexpected (to me) bias against claimants in general if you are actively searching for impeachment evidence regarding their presumed testimony. If, after about a month on the job, you are already convinced that all the claimants are liars (and such good ones that you need to work extra hard to catch them), you are going to have a LONG, sad career hearing your own remands. I actually am considering praying that this is still some kind of misunderstood joke, and not evidence that a great number of claimants are being blindsided by a "prosecuting" ALJ in a nonadversarial proceeding. My poor, aching flabber.
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Post by okeydokey on Jul 23, 2009 12:15:05 GMT -5
Just wondering, where do you draw the line.
Say you have a claimant who claims that he has to lay down at home 20 hours out of the day. But you have just seen a news report the day before where claimant is interviewed and admits that he has a job in a cutting edge industry.
Your answer is a referral to OIG?
Perhaps you could question the claimant, i.e., Did I see you on the news? If the answer is yes, explore. If the answer is no, then refer to OIG.
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Post by decadealj on Jul 23, 2009 12:22:43 GMT -5
If it is not an exhibit in the record or sworn testimony, it does not exist.
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Post by privateatty on Jul 23, 2009 14:18:34 GMT -5
5 USC Sec. 556(e) states as follows:
"e) The transcript of testimony and exhibits, together with all papers and requests filed in the proceeding, constitutes the exclusive record for decision in accordance with section 557 of this title and, on payment of lawfully prescribed costs, shall be made available to the parties. When an agency decision rests on official notice of a material fact not appearing in the evidence in the record, a party is entitled, on timely request, to an opportunity to show the contrary. "
Now that the Propman has gotten his flabber out of joint, I thought a little statutory reference might be in order, rather than war stories.
Propman: repair thy flabber!
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Post by southeastalj on Jul 23, 2009 19:30:42 GMT -5
I would agree that Legal Beagle's post that started all this discussion does at least imply a bias towards claimants. One that any smart claimant's attorney who may follow this board (which I imagine is more than a few since Charles Hall's blog has linked over here several times), if they were able to figure out who Legal beagle was in real life, would be more than happy to attach to every appeal they filed to the Appeals Council and District Court for the next decade. Which given the thrust of the initial idea is ironic on many levels.
Its important for all the new judges to remember that nothing they do or say from now on is anonymous, even on an internet message board, and what you say on here very well could come back to haunt you. What beagle has stated she wants to do and the tone associated with it is truly a basis to appeal any decision she might issue (before she even issues her first one) from here on out regardless of whether she ever actually follows through on it.
These cases are not games to be played and if you think they are you have badly chosen to accept an appointment. Several judges hired last year (at least 4) have already quit for a variety of reasons. This is a highly stressful job making decisions that in many cases will determine the course of someone's life for many years.
Anyone who has been appointed should pause before they post anything here or anywhere else and ask themselves if they would send it out in an email with their real name attached to it. If the answer is no, then you shouldn't be posting it!
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Post by privateatty on Jul 23, 2009 21:13:18 GMT -5
I would agree that Legal Beagle's post that started all this discussion does at least imply a bias towards claimants. One that any smart claimant's attorney who may follow this board (which I imagine is more than a few since Charles Hall's blog has linked over here several times), if they were able to figure out who Legal beagle was in real life, would be more than happy to attach to every appeal they filed to the Appeals Council and District Court for the next decade. Which given the thrust of the initial idea is ironic on many levels. Its important for all the new judges to remember that nothing they do or say from now on is anonymous, even on an internet message board, and what you say on here very well could come back to haunt you. What beagle has stated she wants to do and the tone associated with it is truly a basis to appeal any decision she might issue (before she even issues her first one) from here on out regardless of whether she ever actually follows through on it. These cases are not games to be played and if you think they are you have badly chosen to accept an appointment. Several judges hired last year (at least 4) have already quit for a variety of reasons. This is a highly stressful job making decisions that in many cases will determine the course of someone's life for many years. Anyone who has been appointed should pause before they post anything here or anywhere else and ask themselves if they would send it out in an email with their real name attached to it. If the answer is no, then you shouldn't be posting it! Would be a heckuva affidavit to get the blog post as an Exhibit. "privateatty, well known malcontent and suspected communist sympathizer is now the Judge in the above-captioned matter and should be subject to this Board's recusal Order forthwith for malfeasance and over-stepping judicial boundaries." All kidding aside, there is some sage advice here. All lawyers and Judges included have to understand that strictly speaking there is no such thing as being truly anonymous. As Falstaff said to young Hal: "discretion is the better part of valour."
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Post by Legal Beagle on Jul 24, 2009 16:12:40 GMT -5
I never said I have done it, or will do it - just that I had heard of another judge who does it routinely, and proposed the concept for discussion - and thereby created a monster. Perhaps it is time for the moderators to create a secure blog where only registered and confirmed ALJs could discuss issues without fear of our questions and/ or answers being used against us in a court of law. Sad that it may come to that.
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Post by justahuman on Jul 24, 2009 16:55:08 GMT -5
I didn’t see your posts as rhetorical questions. They sounded like a plan.
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Post by decadealj on Jul 24, 2009 17:41:46 GMT -5
LB- may have a good idea. It may be helpful for Pix, et. al. to consider establishing a link where you at least have to be registered and to log-on rather than have anyone be able to anonoymously post anything they want. I seem to recall Grace and Anonoymous tore up TOB and but for some moderation by Pixie and the Administrator on this board, some of the posts have ben far from professional commentary. I have been tempted on several occasions to "punt" but have been convinced I may have something to offer the new ALJs that they are not going to see or hear anywhere else.
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Post by ALJD on Jul 24, 2009 20:47:57 GMT -5
Perhaps it is time for the moderators to create a secure blog where only registered and confirmed ALJs could discuss issues without fear of our questions and/ or answers being used against us in a court of law. Sad that it may come to that. Well, AALJ already has a secure forum. But you got to pay about $500 a year (aka membership) for the privilege. Theoretically I could set up a sub-forum for just for ALJs. However, this will require at least two things: 1. Any handle is fine, but the underlying registration has to be using the official work e-mail address. 2. The ability on the administrator's part to verify the person is an ALJ with a federal agency, which could be accomplished using the real name from the work e-mail and the agency directory. As you can see from above, this will at least involving "unmasking" yourself to the administrator running the board (me), and how do you know this board isn't one big conspiracy set up by some stooge in Crystal Palace? And even if you trust me, I'll also have to put some extra time in to set everything up and verify the interested ALJs. Moreover, at what level are we going to cut off the ALJ eligibility? At the line ALJ level? HOCALJ? MALJ? RCALJ? And who's going to be able to know? I know who's who in my agency, but how about other agencies? Ultimately, the question is, is this worth it? With all the above issues, I'm really not sure how many ALJs on the board are interested. If all we have are 3 or 4 people, why not just pm each other? Anyway, it's an interesting concept, but there are a lot of bumps in implementation. I'd like to hear what other folks think.
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Post by ruonthelist on Jul 25, 2009 9:56:03 GMT -5
Well, AALJ already has a secure forum. But you got to pay about $500 a year (aka membership) for the privilege. Theoretically I could set up a sub-forum for just for ALJs. FALJC also has a secure forum limited to ALJs who are members and have registered, and FALJC dues are a lot less than AALJ-- $150/year. Because FALJC has members from lots of agencies, its message board tends to focus on issues of general interest to the ALJ community rather than agency-specific issues. But a message board is what its members make it. If a lot of SSA judges who are FALJC members wanted to start up discussions of SSA issues they could. Having said that, a couple caveats: 1. Access to the message board is not by itself, IMHO, sufficient reason to pay the dues of either organization. I think that FALJC membership is well worth the dues, but the message board is not all that high on my list of priorities. 2. Complete anonymity and security on a message board is probably not attainable. It certainly isn't on the AALJ or FALJC boards, which require you to post with your real name. Access is limited to organization members, but there are a lot of organization members. Complete confidence in maintaining your anonymity would not be attainable on a hypothetical sub-board here, for the reasons that ALJD lists. An ALJ only sub-board is an interesting idea, but I doubt that I would post on it. Anything that I am likely to want to say I can say here. Using screen names is a convention of this sort of board and is kind of fun, but I don't fool myself into thinking that my anonymity is completely safe. Even though I probably wouldn't post on an ALJ-only board I might register in order to lurk, just out of curiosity. And that is also part of the potential problem for anyone hoping for privacy. You wouldn't know what ALJs were registered and lurking, not all of whom would be motivated by innocent idle curiosity like mine. ALJD and Pix have done a lot of work to provide a useful service for all of us, and my gut feeling is that for them to go through the added chore of setting up an ALJ-specific forum would be more trouble than it would be worth. But that's just my opinion. Others may feel differently, and there may be enough of them to justify making the experiment.
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Post by privateatty on Jul 25, 2009 12:10:32 GMT -5
Perhaps it is time for the moderators to create a secure blog where only registered and confirmed ALJs could discuss issues without fear of our questions and/ or answers being used against us in a court of law. Sad that it may come to that. Well, AALJ already has a secure forum. But you got to pay about $500 a year (aka membership) for the privilege. Theoretically I could set up a sub-forum for just for ALJs. However, this will require at least two things: 1. Any handle is fine, but the underlying registration has to be using the official work e-mail address. 2. The ability on the administrator's part to verify the person is an ALJ with a federal agency, which could be accomplished using the real name from the work e-mail and the agency directory. As you can see from above, this will at least involving "unmasking" yourself to the administrator running the board (me), and how do you know this board isn't one big conspiracy set up by some stooge in Crystal Palace? And even if you trust me, I'll also have to put some extra time in to set everything up and verify the interested ALJs. Moreover, at what level are we going to cut off the ALJ eligibility? At the line ALJ level? HOCALJ? MALJ? RCALJ? And who's going to be able to know? I know who's who in my agency, but how about other agencies? Ultimately, the question is, is this worth it? With all the above issues, I'm really not sure how many ALJs on the board are interested. If all we have are 3 or 4 people, why not just pm each other? Anyway, it's an interesting concept, but there are a lot of bumps in implementation. I'd like to hear what other folks think. Let me vote a big thumbs down on that idea.
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Post by decadealj on Jul 26, 2009 14:23:10 GMT -5
Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Thanks to Pix and ALJDiscussion for providing this quorum to assist folks undertaking "The Process".
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Post by Legal Beagle on Jul 27, 2009 18:01:05 GMT -5
Are we a quorum? I guess with all the lurkers, we probably are.
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Post by decadealj on Jul 28, 2009 7:14:34 GMT -5
Messed up again- I meant forum.
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