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Free Claim Review

I enjoy my Social Security disability law practice. I have focused on this area of law for over 15 years, and I know what a difference an award of disability benefits can make to my clients.

I learned of a Fully Favorable decision for a client earlier this week. This case was out of the ordinary because I was just retained last month. The client has Meniere’s disease, which affects the vestibular labyrinth/inner ear. Despite frequent attacks of vertigo, with the tinnitus and hearing loss characteristic of Meniere’s disease, the case had been denied initially and again at Reconsideration. The client hired me after the case had already been set for a hearing.

The client had undergone evaluation and treatment from ENT specialists, and her hearing loss was documented by audiometry. But the record did not contain vestibular testing, typically videonystagmography (VNG) testing, that would nail down the Meniere’s diagnosis and establish the inner ear problem as the cause of her disabling vertigo. I asked the client about this, and she said she had undergone some sort of testing from her ENT, but didn’t really remember what. We obtained the test results, and the test was in fact a VNG test with abnormal results. I submitted the test results to her Social Security claim file.

With the VNG test results in the record, it seemed to me that Listing 2.07 was met. I drafted a detailed on the record request, describing the medical documentation of frequent episodes of vertigo, tinnitus, and hearing loss measured by audiometric testing, and of course the abnormal vestibular test results. I submitted the request to the judge, stating that since the listing requirements were met by the medical evidence in the file, the claim could be granted without the necessity of a hearing. The judge agreed, and issued a concise Fully Favorable decision on Monday.

The entire process, from the day of my initial consult with the client to the date of the Fully Favorable decision, took less than 6 weeks.