Marasco & Nesselbush recently obtained a landmark award of Social Security Disability Insurance benefits on behalf of a deserving woman who had been wrongly denied those benefits for more than ten years. In December 2003, a mentally disabled woman entered our office. She had been on Supplemental Security Income since 1994, but she was having a difficult time making ends meet.
Someone at the Social Security Administration told the claimant about getting benefits on her father’s record, but she had never been able to do so. Disabled Adult Child benefits allow a disabled person, under certain circumstances, to collect Social Security benefits based upon a parent’s earnings record. These benefits are only available, however, if the individual is able to show that he or she had been disabled and unable to work since prior to age 22 and if the parent is collecting her/his Social Security benefits. Our client had applied for these benefits, but in order to prove she was disabled prior to age 22, she had to prove that she had been disabled all the way back to 1969. This was a tall order, and Social Security kept denying her. Disabled Adult Child cases are very complicated.
Upon seeing how the claimant was struggling with her mental condition, Donna Nesselbush and the Marasco & Nesselbush Social Security team sprang into action and wanted to help. An Administrative Law Judge denied the case at hearing, but our team did not give up. When our client’s appeal was also denied by the Appeals Council, we did not give up. Rather, we filed suit in Federal District Court and proved that the Administrative Law Judge’s decision was unjust. A second hearing was scheduled. Unfortunately, the exact same Administrative Law Judge heard the case, and denied this woman’s application all over again. After another appeal was denied, our team filed suit once again in Federal District Court. Once again, the Court ruled that the decision was unjust, and ordered Social Security to hold another hearing on the matter.
In September 2013, a third hearing was held. All throughout the entire litigation history of the case, lawyers from Marasco & Nesselbush had made one simple argument: this case involved psychiatric records dating all the way back to the Nixon Administration. We argued that, at the very least, before denying benefits to a woman whom, Social Security itself agreed had been too mentally ill to work since at least 1994, the Administration should at least ask a psychiatrist to review the medical records and opine as to our client’s ability to work from 1969 and onward. Finally, the administration relented and granted our request that the case be reviewed by a “psychiatric medical expert.” At the hearing the psychiatrist finally testified that our client had indeed been disabled for five continuous decades. We finally WON our client’s case!
We are proud of the Marasco & Nesselbush Social Security team. It took the dedication of several attorneys working together for ten long years to finally get this outstanding and impressive favorable result.
We at Marasco & Nesselbush are humbled and grateful to have worked on such a deserving case for such a deserving client. If you or someone you know needs an attorney, call us. If we believe you are disabled and have been denied justice, we will fight for your disability benefits, even for a decade, if that’s what it takes to WIN!
