Furr v. Commissioner of Social Security Administration , 596 F. App'x 240 ( 2015 )

UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 14-1998
LARRY CHARLES FURR,
Plaintiff - Appellant,
v.
COMMISSIONER OF SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION,
Defendant - Appellee.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of
South Carolina, at Greenville. Richard M. Gergel, District
Judge. (6:13-cv-01229-RMG)
Submitted: February 27, 2015 Decided: March 9, 2015
Before KEENAN and WYNN, Circuit Judges, and HAMILTON, Senior
Circuit Judge.
Vacated and remanded by unpublished per curiam opinion.
Larry Charles Furr, Appellant Pro Se. Barbara Murcier Bowens,
Assistant United States Attorney, Columbia, South Carolina, for
Appellee.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
PER CURIAM:
Larry Charles Furr filed applications for disability
insurance benefits (“DIB”) and supplemental security income
(“SSI”) benefits, claiming that he had become disabled and
unable to work on March 1, 2010. Both applications were denied
by the Commissioner of the Social Security Administration
(“Commissioner”). Upon Furr’s request, an administrative law
judge (“ALJ”) held a hearing, in which Furr amended the alleged
onset date of his disability to October 3, 2011. After
considering the evidence, the ALJ concluded that Furr had not
been disabled for purposes of his DIB and SSI applications.
After exhausting his administrative appeal, Furr filed a
complaint in the district court. He asserted that the decisions
of the ALJ and the Appeals Council were contrary to law and not
supported by substantial evidence. The district court, adopting
the magistrate judge’s recommendation over Furr’s objections,
determined that substantial evidence supported the
Commissioner’s decision and affirmed the denial of benefits.
Although Furr raises numerous issues for review on appeal,
we address only one. Furr claims that the ALJ erred by deciding
his case without considering the documents constituting his SSI
application. The Commissioner concedes, and our review of the
record before us confirms, that Furr’s SSI application is absent
from the administrative record submitted by the Commissioner to
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the district court. Furthermore, after reviewing the record, we
cannot say that the SSI application was included in the
administrative record before the ALJ. Furr further alleges that
his SSI application included evidence of a neuropathy diagnosis,
which, if he is accurate, is inconsistent with the ALJ’s finding
that the record contained no diagnosis of neuropathy.
We “review[] the record to ensure that the ALJ’s factual
findings are supported by substantial evidence and that its
legal findings are free of error.” Radford v. Colvin, 734 F.3d
288, 295 (4th Cir. 2013). “A necessary predicate to engaging in
substantial evidence review is a record of the basis for the
ALJ’s ruling.” Id. Thus, “[i]f the reviewing court has no way
of evaluating the basis for the ALJ’s decision, then the proper
course, except in rare circumstances, is to remand to the agency
for additional investigation or explanation.” Id. (internal
quotation marks omitted). Additionally, “the ALJ must fully and
fairly develop the record so that a just determination of
disability may be made.” Clark v. Shalala, 28 F.3d 828, 830
(8th Cir. 1994); see also Marsh v. Harris, 632 F.2d 296, 299
(4th Cir. 1980).
Based on the record before us, we conclude that the only
evidence in the administrative record that was considered by the
ALJ concerned the period of disability and impairments alleged
by Furr in his DIB application. Although Furr’s SSI application
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appears to concern the same period of disability and impairments
as he alleged in his DIB application, Furr asserts that his SSI
application included evidence that was not adduced in his DIB
application and that apparently was not considered by the ALJ.
The absence of Furr’s SSI application from the administrative
and district court records precludes a determination whether
Furr’s allegations concerning the evidence from his SSI
application are accurate. Due to this absence, we conclude that
the ALJ failed to adequately develop the record, and that the
record before the district court did not allow it to adequately
evaluate the basis for the ALJ’s decision.
Accordingly, we vacate the district court’s order and
remand the case to the district court with instructions to
remand the case to the agency for further proceedings consistent
with this opinion. We dispense with oral argument because the
facts and legal contentions are adequately presented in the
materials before this court and argument would not aid the
decisional process.
VACATED AND REMANDED
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