Johnson v. Barnhart’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

10 federal appellate ·

Most-quoted passages

The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 53 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “The etiology of pain is not so well understood, or people's pain thresholds so uniform, that the severity of pain experienced by a given individual can be "read off" from a medical report. Pain is a complex, multidimensional, subjective experience. The report of pain is related to numerous variables, such as cultural background, past experience, the meaning of the situation, personality variables, attention, arousal level, emotions, and reinforcement contingencies. There is often a poor relationship between the 'subjective' experience of pain and 'objective' or external referents. This may be most evident in the case of chronic pain where apparently similar peripheral pathology, injury, or nociceptive input [pain stimulus] can result in markedly different presentations. Whereas patient self-report, using verbal analogue or other rating scales, is perhaps the most straightforward and appropriate means of determining pain severity (or other aspects of the pain experience), this is prone to response bias like all self-reports.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 314 F. Supp. 3d 941 - Farley v. Berryhill