Short-term and long-term disability plans are supposed to provide workers and professionals with coverage to make ends meet when a serious medical impairment or injury takes the person away from work. Not everybody participates in these insurance plans. In fact, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says the roughly 39 percent of people working in private […]
A recent ruling from a federal court in Arizona offers a lesson on the consequences of discovery abuse: The court imposed severe sanctions on an insurer for wrongfully withholding documents requested in discovery. The case of Sell v. Country Life Insurance Co., 2016 WL 3179461 (D. Ariz., June 1, 2016), involved a claim for disability […]
Claims for employee benefits brought under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act are subject to very strict rules regarding time limits for deciding claims. However, neither the ERISA statute, nor the claim regulations found at 29 C.F.R. Section 2560.503-1 prescribe specific penalties for violating the rules.
DeBofsky, Sherman & Casciari attorneys Mark DeBofsky and Martina Sherman recently won the case of Wonsowski v. United of Omaha Life Ins. Co., 2016 WL 3088141 (N.D. Ill. June 2, 2016) following a bench trial before Magistrate Judge Geraldine Soat Brown in the federal court in Chicago. The case involved Shellie Wonsowski, who had worked […]
Many disability insurance policies require a showing of an inability to perform each and every regular job duty. Does that mean you can’t be considered disabled if you are unable to perform some but not all of the required job duties? In most jurisdictions, the answer is yes – you need not prove an inability […]
In reviewing disability determinations, a number of problematic issues appear with relative frequency. The recently issued ruling in Groth v. Centurylink Disability Plan, 2016 WL 1621724 (S.D. Ohio, April 25, 2016), contains a potpourri of such issues. Plaintiff Stacie Groth claimed she was disabled due to lumbar degenerative disk disease, fibromyalgia, depression and anxiety. Despite […]