ERISA litigation

Nearly all employee benefit plans are governed by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, or ERISA. ERISA is a federal law. As a result, claimants who sue their plans for a denial of disability benefits usually will have to try their cases in federal courts.

More importantly, in an ERISA case, a claimant must show the court that a denial of disability benefits was not merely incorrect, but “arbitrary and capricious.” That’s a difficult standard. In an ERISA case, it’s not enough for claimants to show that the plan’s decision to deny them benefits was incorrect; they must also show that the decision had no factual basis.

Despite the broad scope of ERISA, it expressly exempts from its provisions any “governmental plan.” What that means for a government employee, or anyone else covered under the exception, is that he or she can bring a lawsuit challenging a denial of disability benefits without having to contend with ERISA’s strict standards and procedural requirements. Usually, that will be an advantage to the claimant bringing the disability lawsuit.

Further, in Tennessee, a claimant exempted from ERISA by the governmental exception can raise state law claims against the disability insurer or plan administrator including a bad faith failure to pay claim. Under Tennessee’s bad faith failure to pay law, a claimant could be awarded up to 25 percent of his or her claim as a bad faith penalty. In contrast, claimants cannot avail themselves of state law remedies in a standard ERISA action.

As you might expect, under ERISA, a governmental plan includes any plan established by the federal government or by any state government. However, the definition of a governmental plan does not stop there. ERISA also extends the definition of a governmental plan to include any plan established by a political subdivision or any agency or instrumentality of the government, state or federal.

In most cases, it’s fairly easy to determine if you have a governmental plan. However, because ERISA does not provide any definition of the terms “political subdivision” or “instrumentality of government,” there are some gray areas as to when an employer’s disability plan meets the governmental exception. What’s important to remember, for claimants and practitioners alike, is that private entities may still be considered an “instrumentality of government,” particularly if they contract with a municipal organization or body.

In lawsuits challenging an ERISA plan’s denial of long-term disability benefits, can claimants who have qualified for Social Security disability benefits use that as evidence in their case? Or, to put it another way, can a decision from the Social Security Administration (SSA) on a claimant’s disability status be a factor in a court’s overall analysis of whether an ERISA plan improperly denied long-term disability benefits?

The answer to both questions is “yes,” although with caveats. Courts are mindful that the standards for determining disability under the Social Security requirements may vary considerably from the standards for determining disability under a private ERISA plan. However, as noted by the district court in Gellerman v. Jefferson Pilot Fin. Ins. Co. (S.D.Tex.2005) “no court has held that an SSA determination is completely irrelevant” in an ERISA dispute over disability benefits.

In Glenn v. Metlife (2006), the Sixth Circuit found that the insurer’s failure to give any weight to the claimant’s SSA disability determination was “perplexing” and a “significant factor” in its analysis of the claimant’s claim for long-term disability benefits. (The Sixth Circuit includes the federal district courts in Tennessee.)

In Glenn, the claimant qualified for the first phase of long-term disability benefits under her ERISA plan after she showed that she could not complete the material duties of her regular job. In order to reduce the amount of disability payments it had to make to the claimant, the insurer hired a law firm to help her with her disability claim with the SSA. The claimant then qualified for total disability benefits through the SSA, and the insurer deducted those government benefits from the disability payments that it was obliged to pay, as provided for under the policy. (All long-term disability policies this author has seen and is aware of allow the insurance company a credit for Social Security benefits.)

After receiving long-term disability benefits for two years, the claimant then had to meet the more difficult standard in phase two of her disability plan. Now, she had to show that she could not perform the material duties of any gainful occupation, as opposed to the specific material duties of her prior job. Despite receiving repeated and detailed correspondence from her physician supporting her claim, the insurer determined that she failed to meet the “any gainful occupation” standard and terminated her benefits. The claimant filed a lawsuit in district court challenging the decision, and the district court ruled in favor of the insurer. She then appealed her case to the Sixth Circuit.

Articles Tagged with ERISA litigation

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