Background

HALLEX Sections I-2-5-42 Obtaining Medical Expert Opinion Through Interrogatories and I-2-5-57 Obtaining Vocational Expert Opinion Through Interrogatories are amended to reflect that administrative law judges (ALJ), attorney adjudicators, and hearing office (HO) staff (with the authority to issue interrogatories in cases not yet assigned to an ALJ under the direction of the Hearing Office Chief Administrative Law Judge (HOCALJ)) need not proffer proposed pre and posthearing medical expert (ME) and vocational expert (VE) interrogatories to claimants or representatives prior to submission to the ME or VE. After the completed interrogatories are received, they must continue to be proffered to claimants and representatives.

Explanation of Content and Changes

I-2-5-42 C and I-2-5-57 C Determining Whether Claimant or Representative Has Objections are deleted and existing subsections “D” are redesignated as “C”.

I-2-5-42 A and I-2-5-57 A General are revised to include a NOTE indicating that attorney adjudicators, and hearing office (HO) staff (with the authority to issue interrogatories in cases not yet assigned to an ALJ under the direction of the Hearing Office Chief Administrative Law Judge (HOCALJ)) need not proffer proposed pre and posthearing medical expert (ME) and vocational expert (VE) interrogatories to claimants or representatives prior to submission to the ME or VE. We also include reference to Chief Judge Bulletin 08-03.

I-2-5-42 D.1. and I-2-5-57 D.1. Initial Transmission of Interrogatories to the ME (VE) are revised consistent with the deletion of existing I-2-5-42 C. and to include the addition of Certified Electronic Case procedures.

I-2-5-42 D.2. and I-2-5-57 D.2. Subsequent Transmission of Interrogatories to an ME (VE) are revised to delete paragraph “a,” to redesignate paragraphs “b” through “d” as paragraphs “a” through “c”, and to revise the introductory sentence to redesignated paragraph “a” (existing paragraph “b”).

Consistent with the above revisions, we are also deleting HALLEX I-2-5-97 & HALLEX I-2-5-98, which are sample-letters used to transmit proposed interrogatories to the claimant or representative. All references to OHA are revised to ODAR.

Date: November 3, 2010