A recent ruling received by DeBofsky, Sherman & Casciari examined the issue of how to determine pre-disability earnings. In Cheney v. Standard Ins. Co., 2015 WL 2015 U.S.Dist.LEXIS 30918 (N.D.Ill. March 13, 2015)(Issue: Pre-Disability Earnings). In an earlier ruling (Cheney v. Standard Ins. Co., No. 13 C 4269, 2014 WL 4259861 (N.D. Ill. Aug. 28, […]
In 2013, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals electrified the ERISA world when it ruled that in addition to paying benefits due after a wrongful rejection of a disability insurance claim, the Life Insurance Company of North America (LINA), a Cigna Corp. subsidiary, would also have to disgorge the profits it earned on the […]
Signing a severance agreement or settlement agreement with an employer that contains a general release may unintentionally bar a claimant from pursuing a disability benefit claim under ERISA. That was the lesson learned by Dr. Thomas Gonda, Jr., who worked as a thoracic surgeon at Kaiser Permanente until he became disabled due to cognitive impairments […]
Although lawsuits challenging employee benefit denials under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) are brought as “civil actions” in accordance with the United States Code, the manner in which such cases are adjudicated deviates from the norm according to a recent article authored by Mark DeBofsky, “A Critical Appraisal of the Current State of […]
A recent ruling from a federal court in Alabama – Rosen v. Provident Life and Accident Insur. Co., 2015 WL 260839 (N.D.Ala. January 21, 2015) addressed a controversial issue involving ERISA preemption. Typically, ERISA is implicated only where an employer sponsors a retirement plan or offers group coverage to its employees for disability, life, or […]
In evaluating occupational disability claims, insurers distinguish between the insured’s job and their occupation. If an employee cannot perform their job, they may still be denied disability insurance benefits if they remain capable of performing their occupation as it is generally performed in the national economy. Polnicky v. Liberty Life Assur.Co. of Boston, 2014 WL […]