Opinion
4:21cv1-MW/CAS
04-08-2022
CHIQULA LYNETTE WILSON, Plaintiff, v. KILOLO KIJAKAZI, Acting Commissioner, Social Security Administration, Defendant.
ORDER ACCEPTING REPORT AND RECOMMENDATION
MARK E. WALKER CHIEF UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE
This Court has considered, without hearing, the Magistrate Judge's Report and Recommendation, ECF No. 22, and has also reviewed de novo Plaintiff's objections, ECF No. 23, and the Defendant's response, ECF No. 24. Upon review of the filings and considering the record as a whole, this Court agrees with the Magistrate Judge that the ALJ's decision was supported by substantial evidence.
In so stating, this Court agrees with Plaintiff that a reviewing court cannot simply ignore an ALJ's failure to state with particularity the weight given to different medical opinions and the reasons therefor. See ECF No. 23 at 3-4. However, that is not what occurred here. In this case, the ALJ stated with particularity the weight he assigned Dr. Dulay's medical opinion (“not persuasive”) and the reasons therefor (“[i]t includes extreme limits . . . that are not supported by the overall record”) and cited the portions of the record supporting this finding. Similarly, this Court agrees with the Magistrate Judge that substantial evidence supports the ALJ's credibility determinations of Plaintiff. “In all events, there is no rigid requirement that the ALJ specifically refer to every piece of evidence in [his] decision, so long as the decision enables the reviewing court to conclude that the ALJ considered the claimant's medical condition as a whole.” Lewen v. Comm'r of Soc. Sec., 605 Fed.Appx. 967, 968 (11th Cir. 2015) (citation and quotation marks omitted).
Accordingly, IT IS ORDERED:
The report and recommendation, ECF No. 22, is accepted and adopted, over the Plaintiff's objections, as this Court's opinion. The Clerk shall enter judgment stating, “The decision of the Commissioner to deny Plaintiff's application for DIB is AFFIRMED.” The Clerk shall close the file.
SO ORDERED.