This morning, I tried and won a disability case, but my client will not receive any past due benefits and I won’t get paid either.   What happened?  

What happened here is that my client failed to tell me about a job where he worked full time for over two years.  His work was as a courier for a large delivery company.  In his mind, it was not a “real” job because all he was doing was driving.  He neglected to reference this job at all on my new client questionnaire.  In fact, the first time I learned anything at all about the courier work was a week before the hearing when we met for a pre-hearing conference.  Even then, he told me that his work was “part time” and that he only managed to last a few days.

At the hearing, however, his recollection improved and he testified to the judge that he had worked as a courier for over two years and he did not stop until six months after his 62nd birthday.  Since my client elected to receive early retirement Social Security benefits, he will not be eligible for Social Security disability benfefits after his 62nd birthday.  I had expected to argue for a “closed period” of time – from the date that he stopped working his last “regular” job until his 62nd birthday.  Instead, I expect that the judge will find him disabled, but with an onset date of 6 months past his 62nd birthday.  This means that my client will not recover any disability benefits at all – either past due or on-going and I just wasted several hours of my time working for free.

The point of all this is not to rag on my client.  He is a nice man and I think he honestly did not think that his courier job was a “real job.”  I would, however, encourage any disability claimant to learn from this experience.  Any job that you have had – even if it was part time or a job that was outside your career field – must be discussed with your lawyer.  Similarly you need to be completely and totally forthcoming to your lawyer about sensitive subjects like drug and alcohol use, arrests, and personal medical problems.  You cannot assume that any information about your past work or about your medical condition is not relevant to your case.

Had this client been more forthcoming, he would have been able to avoid the disappointment of learning that his four years of waiting for a hearing have all been for naught and I would have been able to avoid wasting many hours of my time working on a case with no possibility of a positive outcome.
[tags] employment information in SSDI claim, omission of information in attorney client conversation [/tags]