I am in need of an agressive ssi lawyer. I filed for ssi in 1995 finally after several appeals a partially favorable decision for onset date of 8/8/2003. I filed a review in district court but ssa has lost the cassette tape of last hearing so the dc remanded back to ssa to develop the record. I have my complete case and I am tired of SSA losing my case file. My protective filing date is October 27, 1995. HELP!!!! I can not find a SSI lawyer in California who cares.
–Wendy

Jonathan Ginsberg responds: Wendy’s case illustrates a number of points about problems in the Social Security adjudication process. First of all, this case is old – her protective filing date is in 1995. Even worse, SSA has lost her file. This means that her lawyer is going to have the difficult task of getting copies of records. In any ten year period of time, doctors retire and close their practices, hospitals get bought out and renamed, records are lost. Just trying to put the file back together will be a daunting task.

My advice for Wendy would be to try to find a lawyer who specializes in appellate work and who is used to taking non-mainstream cases.

It is also possible that any judge who gets this case might be willing to give Wendy some benefit of the doubt because of the long an tortuous road this case has taken – in other words, it would be difficult to turn her down after twelve years of fighting.

[tags] social security lost file, district court remand, develop the record [/tags]