Johns v. Astrue, No. 11-4099 (10th Cir. 2011)
Annotate this CasePlaintiff-Appellant Kathryn Johns appealed the district court’s denial of her motion for attorneys' fees under the Equal Access to Justice Act (EAJA) which followed the court's remand to the Commissioner of her claims for Social Security disability benefits. In denying Plaintiff's application for disability benefits, the administrative law judge (ALJ) concluded that her diagnosed mental impairments were not severe apart from alcohol abuse. Plaintiff argued before the district court that the ALJ had failed to apply the correct analysis in assessing her alcoholism. Specifically, the ALJ did not first find that she was disabled, and only then could the ALJ determine whether she would still be disabled if she stopped using alcohol. The government admitted that the ALJ did not follow the specified procedure, but argued that the error was harmless because the dispositive question was the same. Ultimately the district court remanded the case back to the Commissioner. Plaintiff then moved for fees under the EAJA. The government responded by arguing that a fee award was inappropriate because it believed the error by the ALJ was harmless. The district court denied Plaintiff's motion for fees. Finding that the district court believed that application of harmless error in this case was a close call, the Tenth Circuit concluded that under those circumstances, the district court did not "cross the bounds of the rationally available choices available to it when it concluded that the Commissioner's position was substantially justified." Accordingly, the Court affirmed the denial of fees.
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