And in Super Bowl News . . .
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Well, it’s finally Super Bowl weekend, so how do we tie that into the issues covered by this blog? Easy. Here’s a terrific article in this week’s Sports Illustrated (hey, we can’t get all our reading from Aspen Publishers) on the problem of disability and health benefits - and the fact that there effectively aren’t any - for long retired NFL players. The article isn’t about the legal issues, obviously, although it does touch on the distinction between the current retirement and disability plan, which is generous in this regard, that the union has negotiated for modern era players, and the plight of the players I, and probably many of you too, grew up watching in the seventies and earlier, who were never covered under any even marginally generous union negotiated benefit plan. Of the hundreds of posts I have written on this blog, probably none has had longer legs than this one, on the long legal struggle of former Steelers’ center Mike Webster to obtain benefits from the NFL under the applicable plan. The Sports Illustrated piece is a fine story of the people behind these issues, and presents a sympathetic portrait of them all.
And this, I note, is the first time I have ever linked to Sports Illustrated on this blog, and it wouldn’t surprise me if it turned out to be the last time, too.
And in NFL News . . .
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Here’s an interesting little case out of the Fourth Circuit this week concerning what, at this point, must be the world’s most famous long term disability plan, namely the NFL’s Bert Bell/Pete Rozelle NFL Player Retirement Plan. This plan has been the subject of much media commentary over the past few years, as former players have come forward to complain about the benefits available under the plan to long retired players and as stories, like this one here concerning former Pittsburgh Steeler Mike Webster, have come to light involving questionable decision making in denying the claims of long retired players. I recently reviewed the disability benefits terms of the plan for other purposes, and it is frankly a pretty interesting document, with a lot of room for ambiguity in its application. This stems from the fact that the plan provides different types or levels of benefits depending on when a former NFL player became disabled, including how long after ceasing playing in the league the incapacity set in. The plan recognizes that the nature of professional football can result in long term injuries that may not manifest themselves in disability until years, in some instances many, have passed from the time the player retired from the league, and different benefits can kick in depending on when in that time period the player’s disability, originally stemming from injuries incurred while a player, finally arose and disabled him. Deciding when in that long stretch of time the retired player’s long ago on-field injuries finally manifested themselves in an inability to work, i.e., in permanent and total disability, is a difficult undertaking, rife with room for disagreement. And that’s exactly what this new case out of the Fourth Circuit, involving former Bears linebacker Wilber Marshall, is concerned with, the sheer difficulty of making the determination. The Fourth Circuit concluded that the medical evidence did not support the dating of that event given by the board that administers the plan, and pushed the date further back, resulting in an award of additional benefits to the retired player.
The Meaning of Arbitrary and Capricious Review
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A colleague - who, to protect the innocent, shall remain nameless (sort of a blog witness protection program) - passed along this remarkable decision out of the Fourth Circuit this month, Evans v. Eaton Corporation Long Term Disability Plan. The decision is an elegant and sustained defense of the granting of discretion to administrators and the application of the arbitrary and capricious standard of review under ERISA. The opinion reads almost as though the court set out to answer, and perhaps even to throw down a gauntlet to, critics who complain that the Supreme Court should not have established discretionary authority and the corresponding level of review, explaining, among other points, that such review is instead entirely consistent with the purposes and operation of ERISA, as well as with congressional intent. It’s a fine decision, whether you agree or disagree with the court’s analysis and conclusions. I would go beyond that, and suggest that critics of arbitrary and capricious review need to confront and provide a persuasive response to the court’s analysis of these issues, if they are going to criticize, with any credibility, the arbitrary and capricious review standards applied by the courts.
When Can You Sue an Employer for Denial of ERISA Governed Benefits?
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Interesting case out of the United States District Court for the District of Maine the other day, concerning a challenge by a plan participant to how his long term disability payments were calculated. The court essentially found that, since deferential review applied, the administrator’s calculation method could not be challenged, since it was a reasonable approach given the plan’s terms and the evidence. Of more interest, however, was the court’s nice thumbnail approach to the question of when an employer, who has delegated plan operation and decision making to an outside administrator - in the case at bar, the insurer of the long term disability benefits - can be properly named as a defendant in a claim for benefits. The court’s answer is generally never, unless the employer inserted itself into the actual administration and decision making over the claim. The court’s handy-dandy summary, suitable for inclusion in a parenthetical in the brief of your choice, is:
[T]he proper defendant for a denial of benefits claim is "the party that controls administration of the plan." Terry v. Bayer Corp., 145 F.3d 28, 36 (1st Cir. 1998) (quoting Garren v. John Hancock Mut. Life Ins. Co., 114 F.3d 186, 187 (11th Cir. 1997)). Typically, an employer is not the proper defendant when the plan documents name another entity as the plan administrator or claims fiduciary. Kennard v. Unum Life Ins. Co., 2002 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 4467, 2002 WL 412067, *2 (D. Me. March 14, 2002). Here, the Plan names Guardian Life as the "Claims Fiduciary with discretionary authority to determine eligibility for [long-term disability] benefits and to construe the terms of the plan with respect to claims." The Plan expressly states that Guardian Life decides whether a claimant is eligible for disability insurance, whether a claimant meets the requirements for payment of benefits, and what long-term benefits will be paid by the Plan. Guardian Life also disburses the long-term benefits. The courts have developed an exception to the rule that the plan administrator is the proper defendant in instances in which the plaintiff presents evidence that the employer, although not formally identified as the plan administrator, "controlled or influenced the administration of the plan." Beegan v. Associated Press, 43 F. Supp.2d 70, 73-74 (D. Me. 1999) (listing cases); Law v. Ernst & Young, 956 F.2d 364, 372-73 (1st Cir. 1992) ("[U]nless an employer is shown to control administration of a plan, it is not a proper party defendant in an action concerning benefits.") (quoting Daniel v. Eaton Corp., 839 F.2d 263, 266 (6th Cir. 1988)).
The case is LeBlanc v. Sullivan Tire Company.
How an Administrator Can Lose The Right To An Offset
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This is actually a kind of fascinating, if someone odd, long term disability benefits case out of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts. It involves what otherwise would seem to be a remarkably unnoteworthy issue, namely the right of the plan administrator - an insurer who also administered the plan - to offset from the benefit amount the estimated value of social security benefits that the claimant would have received but for the fact that the claimant never applied for them. Seems pretty straightforward, except the court did not allow the insurer to do so, because the insurer did not provide the claimant with assistance in applying for social security benefits as provided for under the plan’s terms. The court found that the insurer could not simultaneously enforce the social security offset provision while not complying with its own obligations under the plan to assist the claimant in seeking social security, and the court proceeded to find that loss of the right to enforce the offset was an appropriate remedy for this violation of the plan terms. Offsets of this ilk are routine, and while claimants often complain about them and try to avoid them, they are normally enforced without any big uproar. Not so here, where the insurer managed to lose the right to the offset. What is more interesting is the reasoning of the magistrate judge (whose recommendations were affirmed and adopted by the district court), which, despite application of the arbitrary and capricious standard of review - which would normally grant the insurer great discretion in the interpretation of the plan terms in question - found that the insurer’s own interpretation of the relevant plan terms was simply too far removed from any sensible reading of the plan terms to be upheld. In a realm of the law where many critics feel that the simple fact of applying the arbitrary and capricious standard of review is outcome determinative in favor of the administrator (a sentiment I don’t agree with and a thesis frequently disproved by court rulings), this is a relatively unusual event. The case is McCormick v. Metropolitan Life, and you can find it here.
What Critics of The Standard of Review In Cases Involving Structural Conflicts of Interest Are Really Complaining About
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There’s a very interesting long term disability decision that was just issued by the District of New Hampshire that is worth a read, not so much for the case itself as for its commentary concerning the standard of review under ERISA in instances where the administrator has been granted discretionary authority by the plan. The court’s facts and the reasoning themselves are nothing out of the ordinary: the arbitrary and capricious standard applies, there is enough evidence in the record to support the administrator’s denial, and thus the administrator’s decision is, quite properly under current law, upheld. But what is interesting is the court’s discussion of its views as to the standard of review and how it affects the outcome of the case, and how those comments shed some light on the criticism that is out there of the law governing the standard of review.
The court acknowledged that the insurer of the plan, which was also the administrator of claims under the plan, had “fully and carefully reviewed [the claimant]'s medical history and thoroughly investigated her claims,” and that there was substantial evidence in the record to support the insurer’s denial of the claim for benefits; the court, however, nonetheless went on to make clear that it disagreed with the applicable body of law governing the standard of review and which mandated the outcome under those facts. The court expressed its displeasure with the First Circuit’s treatment of what are known as structural conflicts of interest, which is a fancy way of saying the circumstance in which the claim administrator deciding the claim for benefits is also the insurer of the benefits who has the obligation to pay the benefits. The court’s exact words? That:
[N]umerous courts, including this one, have questioned the propriety, and even fairness, of the "arbitrary and capricious" standard of review in cases where the same entity that makes eligibility determinations also funds benefit payments. Two judges on a split panel of the First Circuit Court of Appeals recently suggested that the full court, sitting en banc, ought to revisit the standard of review applicable to ERISA cases in which the plan administrator determines benefits eligibility and also funds benefit payments. Denmark v. Liberty Life Assurance Co. of Boston, 481 F.3d 16, 31 (1st Cir. 2007) (Judge Lipez wrote: "I think it is time to reexamine the standard of review issue in an en banc proceeding. Although Judge Howard dissents from the judgment agreed to by Judge Selya and myself, he agrees with me, as indicated in his dissent, that we should reexamine the standard of review issue."). A petition for en banc review is apparently pending in Denmark. But, unless and until the court of appeals (or the Supreme Court) changes the governing standard of review, this court is obliged to apply the law as it currently exists.
Now, I don’t necessarily join in the belief that the First Circuit’s current law on the effect of such structural conflicts of interest is the wrong approach or needs to be modified, in the absence of Supreme Court changes to the law governing the standard of review in circumstances in which the administrator has been granted discretionary authority. You can find my thinking on that point here and here. As the District Court explained the law:
Under the current law of this circuit, merely pointing out that a plan administrator is also the entity that pays any benefits found due under the plan is insufficient to warrant departure from the applicable arbitrary and capricious standard of review. See, e.g., Wright v. R.R. Donnelley & Sons Co. Group Benefits Plan, 402 F.3d 67, 75 (1st Cir. 2005) ("[T]he fact that the plan administrator will have to pay the plaintiff's claim out of its own assets does not change the arbitrary and capricious standard of review.") (citation and internal punctuation omitted); Doyle v. Paul Revere Life Ins. Co., 144 F.3d 181, 184 (1st Cir. 1998) (same). To warrant subjecting a plan administrator's benefits eligibility determination to a stricter standard of review, a plaintiff must point to some evidence suggesting that its decision was actually influenced by improper factors.
I don’t see anything wrong with this standard, and the actual facts of cases decided recently in this circuit and its district courts concerning this issue support maintaining, rather than changing, this standard. When, as in the case that was before the District Court, a claimant cannot point to anything concrete from inside or outside of the administrative record to suggest that the administrator’s decision was actually distorted by its dual role, there is no reason that the dual role should change the standard of review or the outcome of the case. This point is well illustrated by this case here out of the First Circuit, in which I represented the prevailing defendants, and in which a panel of the First Circuit again suggested that the law concerning structural conflicts of interest should be altered. Yet in that case, the panel found that changing the law was irrelevant for purposes of the case pending before it and that the administrator’s decision would be upheld regardless of the standard of review that was applied, because the claim was properly handled and properly evaluated.
When, as in both of those cases, there is no actual evidence suggesting that the dual role altered the outcome, there is no justification for believing or acting as though it did. The truth, which you see when you spend enough time in the courtroom with these types of cases, is that, as these two and a host of other cases (both in which an alteration of the standard of review was warranted and those in which it was not) show, there will be some sort of distortion or disjunct between the evidence in the administrative record and the administrator’s handling of the claim if an untoward motive was actually involved; it may be disguised, but if you look closely you will find it. In contrast, when you cannot find some sort of gap in logic or reasoning or documentation between the administrator’s decision and the administrative record, there is a reason for this, which is that the determination was on the up and up. Thus, in the absence of evidence founded in the record to suggest an ulterior motive, namely the impact of the structural conflict of interest, there is no reason to assume the conflict affected the outcome and should be allowed to change the standard of review.
What’s more interesting is a second, almost throw away comment by the court, which I think goes more to the center of the complaints critics have about the standard of review, including in cases involving structural conflicts of interest. The court commented:
If this were a breach of contract case, in which [the claimant] sued her insurance company for disability benefits, the outcome might be different. There is, after all, substantial evidence in her medical records (including the opinions of two treating physicians) supportive of the view that [she] is disabled. But, because this case is governed by ERISA, what would otherwise be an insurance coverage or breach of contract case is, instead, one governed by principles of trust law. Liberty's adverse benefits eligibility determination is subject to a far more deferential standard of review.
I think this comment by the court goes directly to what critics of the standard of review are really complaining about, which is not really that the standards of review being applied are wrong, but that they are applied at all. I believe the real complaint of critics of the law on this subject is instead that long term disability claims should be treated and resolved in the same manner as any other type of breach of contract or insurance denial (non-ERISA division) case. This is a whole different kettle of fish than arguing over how the standard of review should be affected by a structural conflict of interest or other issue on the margin, and instead goes right to the heart of the ERISA regime. To some extent, these on-going disputes in the case law that are directed at altering the standard of review to make them more favorable to claimants, such as in cases where the administrator is also the insurer of the benefits, are really proxy wars being fought instead of the real dispute that critics of the system have with denial of benefit claims under ERISA, which is the very application of ERISA doctrines, rather than traditional breach of contract doctrines, to these types of cases.
When Does Plan Language Mandate De Novo Review?
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I wanted to take a moment over the next couple of posts to return to a couple of cases from earlier this month that are worth a look and a comment, but that I haven’t had a chance to talk about yet. One of them is a decision by Judge Lindsay of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts from the beginning of the month, Dickerson v. Prudential Insurance Company, in which the court considered the question of whether plan documents actually conferred discretionary authority on the administrator of an ERISA governed long term disability plan; as most of you already know, if it did not, then the court had to decide a dispute over benefits under that plan de novo, while if it did, the court was to decide the dispute by applying a deferential standard of review.
Now, we see many cases finding that discretionary authority is conferred and that deferential review applies, but cases finding the opposite are actually not quite as common. This is usually because the plan in question in a case either clearly grants discretion, or doesn’t do so at all. As a result, it is comparatively infrequent that a court has to address in any depth whether or not particular plan language grants discretion. Into this relative void steps the Dickerson decision, which is an interesting example of a case finding that the particular language used in a plan did not clearly confer discretionary authority. I liked Judge Lindsay’s description of the applicable standard, which was that:
Courts have recognized that "there are no magic words determining the scope of judicial review of decisions to deny benefits." Brigham, 371 F.3d at 81 (quoting Herzberger v. Standard Ins. Co., 205 F.3d 327, 331 (7th Cir. 2000)). Until insurance plans include language that "could leave no doubt about the administrator's discretion . . . we must in fairness carefully consider existing language that falls short of that ideal." Id.
"[T]he critical question is notice: participants must be able to tell from the plan's language whether the plan is one that reserves discretion for the administrator." Diaz v. Prudential Ins. Co. of Am., 424 F.3d 635, 637 (7th Cir. 2005). Language that merely requires a determination of eligibility by the administrator and proof of the applicant's claim "does not give the employee adequate notice that the plan administrator is to make a judgment largely insulated from judicial review by reason of being discretionary." Herzberger, 205 F.3d at 332. Cf. Diaz, 424 F.3d at 639 (for Plan language to confer discretion on the administrator, it must "communicate the idea that the administrator not only had broad-ranging authority to assess compliance with pre-existing criteria, but also has the power to interpret the rules, to implement the rules, and even to change them entirely.").
The Court concluded that the particular language in the plan at issue in Dickerson gave the administrator the “ the power to make the determination” but imposed a list of specific conditions on the exercise of that power. As a result, the judge held that “[b]ecause the Plan language” suggests that "the plan administrator is to make a judgment within the confines of pre-set standards [and does not have] the latitude to shape the application, interpretation, and content of the rules in each case . . . the language [was] insufficient to trigger deferential review by the court.”
Cost of Living Benefits and Disability Benefits
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There are some who believe that insurance policies are by definition ambiguous - mostly lawyers who solely represent policyholders for a living - and others, on occasion including judges, who sometimes seem to believe that unless a policy specifically excludes something, than it is either ambiguous and provides coverage or simply provides coverage because the policy didn’t come out and say it does not. None of this is correct. Instead, the question of what policies cover should turn on the specific language of the policy in question and the rules of policy interpretation that apply in the specific jurisdiction in question.
The First Circuit applied this proper approach correctly here in this case, Prostkoff v. Paul Revere Life Insurance Company, where the parties disputed whether the plaintiff was entitled to cost of living increases in his disability benefits after the age of 65. The court correctly concluded that the policy language was not ambiguous and that the policy should not be construed to grant such coverage.
There isn’t much law talked about in this case, so I am not sure of its value to practioners, outside of the unlikely event that someone, somewhere, is presented with the exact same dispute over the availability of cost of living adjustments to disability payments after the age of 65. At a minimum, it’s a case that may be worth citing simply as an exemplar of the right approach to interpreting and understanding policy language that may not be perfectly clear on its face.
The Latest Word Out of the First Circuit on Pre-existing Conditions, Long Term Disability Benefits, and Uncertainty Over the Standard of Review
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No one is quicker to post about decisions out of the First Circuit than Appellate Law & Practice, who quickly had this post up on Friday about the First Circuit's opinion issued that day in a long term disability benefits case where the plan and the administrator prevailed at the District Court, and then again before the First Circuit. I represented the prevailing parties before both the District Court and the First Circuit in that one.
Appellate Law & Practice focused in its post on some of the issues addressed by the First Circuit that apply across the board to other types of litigation, and not so much on the issues specific to ERISA that were addressed by the First Circuit in its opinion. There are some points about that opinion that are specific to ERISA cases, and should be of interest to those who practice in this area. Sometime in the next couple of days, I will return to the opinion and discuss those issues, from the perspective of the lawyer - me - who briefed and argued them. For now, here is the opinion itself.
Summary Plan Descriptions and Discovery in ERISA Cases: the Latest from the First Circuit
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The First Circuit issued an opinion in the case of Morales-Alejandro v. Medical Card System on Wednesday. The case, which involved a challenge to a denial of long term disability benefits, is noteworthy for two aspects. The first is that the case reaffirms this circuit’s reluctance to allow discovery beyond production of the administrative record in denial of benefits cases prosecuted under ERISA. The court pointed out that, in this circuit anyway, “ERISA cases are generally decided on the administrative record without discovery, and some very good reason is needed to overcome the presumption that the record on review is limited to the record before the administrator."
The second issue of note is that the court addressed the role of summary plan descriptions in ERISA plans and related litigation, and described the role they should play in a litigated dispute over benefits. In particular, the court declared:
ERISA imposes an important requirement on plan administrators and insurers to communicate accurately with plan participants and beneficiaries. See Bard, 471 F.3d at 244-45. Part of the communication requirement is that the SPD provide certain information "written in a manner calculated to be understood by the average plan participant, and shall be sufficiently accurate and comprehensive to reasonably apprise such participants and beneficiaries of their rights and obligations under the plan." 29 U.S.C. § 1022(a). Section 1022(b) specifies the information to be included in the summary. When the terms, language, or provisions of the SPD conflict with the plan, the language that the claimant reasonably relied on in making and proving his claim will govern the claim process. Bard, 471 F.3d at 245. The burden is on the claimant to show reasonable reliance and resulting prejudice. Id.
The Interrelationship of ERISA and the ADA
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I have talked in other posts about the rights of plans and their administrators to recoup overpayments of benefits directly from the beneficiary, and of the creative lawyering that has been employed - although generally without much success - by overpaid plan participants in the hope of avoiding paying the funds back. The United States District Court for the District of Rhode Island has just issued a very interesting opinion involving this scenario, only this time involving an attempt to rely on the Americans with Disabilities Act to prevent the repayment; this tactic didn’t work either, except to the extent that a claim that the attempt to recoup the overpayment was retaliatory could survive a motion to dismiss. The case is Hatch v. Pitney Bowes, Inc.
Still More on Structural Conflicts of Interest
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Day 3 of my discussion of the First Circuit’s recent ruling concerning structural conflicts of interest and their impact on claims for benefits under ERISA: Workplace Prof blog has his take, and quotes from others, here, and one of my favorite, quirkier, law blogs, Appellate Law & Practice, has its take here.
A Survey of All the Circuits on the Effect on the Standard of Review of Structural Conflicts of Interest
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One of the things lawyers learn early in their careers is that the time it takes to research a particular issue can be reduced dramatically by finding a good published decision out of one of the better federal courts on the issue; such an opinion will often include an excellent synopsis, at a minimum, of the key case law on the issue. In essence, the opinion offers up the outstanding work product, already concluded on the issue in question, of high quality law clerks. Wednesday’s decision in the Denmark case in the First Circuit, which I discussed in yesterday’s post, is a perfect example of this phenomenon, as it provides, in a four paragraph section of the lead opinion, a summary of the law in each circuit on the effect on benefit cases of so-called structural conflicts of interest. As the opinion states:
The circuits have adopted varying approaches to the issue of whether the structural conflict that arises when an insurer both reviews and pays claims justifies less deferential review. In addition to this court, the Seventh and Second Circuits have held that a structural conflict alone is insufficient to alter the standard of review. Instead, these circuits require an actual showing that the conflict of interest affected the benefits decision before there will be any alteration in the standard of review. See Rud v. Liberty Life Assurance Co., 438 F.3d 772, 776-77 (7th Cir. 2006) (holding that a structural conflict of interest, without more, does not affect the standard of review); Sullivan v. LTV Aerospace & Def. Co., 82 F.3d 1251, 1255-56 (2d Cir. 1996) (holding that a claimant must show that a conflict of interest affected the benefits decision, but if such showing is made, de novo review applies).
However, seven other circuits have held that a structural conflict warrants alteration to the standard of review, although six of these circuits apply less deferential review within the arbitrary and capricious framework. Of these six circuits, all except one have adopted a "sliding scale" approach to the standard of review, in which the court applies less deferential review to the extent that a conflict of interest exists. See, e.g., Fought v. Unum Life Ins. Co. of Am., 379 F.3d 997, 1004 (10th Cir. 2004) (per curiam) (explaining that "the court must decrease the level of deference given to the conflicted administrator's decision in proportion to the seriousness of the conflict" (internal citation and quotation omitted)); Pinto, 214 F.3d at 379 (expressly adopting a "sliding scale method, intensifying the degree of scrutiny to match the degree of the conflict"); Vega v. Nat'l Life Ins. Servs., Inc., 188 F.3d 287, 297 (5th Cir. 1999) (en banc) (explaining that "[t]he greater the evidence of conflict on the part of the administrator, the less deferential our abuse of discretion standard will be"); Woo v. Deluxe Corp., 144 F.3d 1157, 1161-62 & n.2 (8th Cir. 1998) (explicitly adopting the sliding scale approach while noting that "not every funding conflict of interest per se warrants heightened review"); Doe v. Group Hosp. & Med. Servs., 3 F.3d 80, 87 (4th Cir. 1993) (applying less deference "to the degree necessary to neutralize any untoward influence resulting from the conflict"). The Ninth Circuit employs a "substantially similar" approach, but with a "conscious rejection of the 'sliding scale' metaphor" on the ground that "[a] straightforward abuse of discretion analysis allows a court to tailor its review to all the circumstances before it." Abatie v. Alta Health & Life Ins. Co., 458 F.3d 955, 967-68 (9th Cir. 2006)(en banc).
The Eleventh Circuit uses a different framework. It first determines, under de novo review, whether the decision was wrong; if it was, and if an inherent conflict of interest exists, "the burden shifts to the claims administrator to prove that its interpretation of the plan is not tainted by self-interest." HCA Health Servs., Inc. v. Employers Health Ins. Co., 240 F.3d 982, 993-94 (11th Cir. 2001). The claims administrator may then meet this burden "by showing that its wrong but reasonable interpretation of the plan benefits the class of participants and beneficiaries." Id. at 994-95.
Finally, the D.C. Circuit has not yet established a standard of review in cases involving a structural conflict of interest. See Wagener v. SBC Pension Benefit Plan-Non Bargained Program, 366 U.S. App. D.C. 1, 407 F.3d 395, 402 (D.C. Cir. 2005) (finding that the result would be the same under either arbitrary and capricious or de novo review).
Current First Circuit Thinking on Structural Conflicts of Interest
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Interesting decision out of the First Circuit yesterday, in the case of Denmark v. Liberty Life Assurance Company, that focused on the proper standard of review to apply in cases in which the administrator both decides the claim for benefits and is also the party that will have to pay the benefits if the claim is upheld. I have addressed in other posts this Circuit’s approach to that issue, and my belief that, although some other circuits take a different approach, the approach taken by this Circuit is the correct one. I discussed that here, here and here. The Denmark appeal generated a separate opinion from each of the judges on the panel, with two judges believing that it is time for the Circuit to reconsider, en banc, its approach to this issue. The third judge emphasized his belief, much like mine, that the Circuit’s current approach is time proven and battle tested, and should not be overturned lightly; he also points out that, given the split among the circuits over this issue, it would make sense not to change course on this issue unless and until the Supreme Court resolves the split.
Mike Webster to Ted Johnson: Are the NFL and the New York Times Kidding?
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I don’t want to turn this blog into a soapbox, and as someone who really likes newspapers, I also don’t want to join the Greek chorus of self-appointed media watchdogs that seems to make up much of the blogosphere. Some things, however, such as this article in the New York Times, call out for a skeptical and critical reaction. The article explains how the NFL has now created a program to provide some funding for long term, home or facility, care for former pro players who “have various forms of dementia,” even though the NFL insists that football injuries to the brain - multiple concussion syndrome, anyone, for those of you who follow the sport? - are not the cause. The article seems to credit the NFL for providing this help to former players - help that, despite the vast wealth of the league, is capped at $88,000 a year - and praises the idea that this problem is being resolved through this program rather than by litigation, i.e. by former players suing the NFL. Astoundingly, the article describes the program as addressing an unmet need because, and I quote the Times here on this, “former players who have dementia do not qualify for the N.F.L.’s disability insurance program, because neither the league nor the union consider their conditions football-related, a stance that has been cast in doubt by several scientific studies.”
And yet, as I discussed in this post several months ago, the family of the late Pittsburgh Steelers center Mike Webster litigated that exact issue for years, finally defeating the NFL, the players association and the plan before the Fourth Circuit court of appeals, to recover benefits under the league’s ERISA governed pension and disability system for exactly this type of injury. The Fourth Circuit’s opinion, in fact, was a pretty powerful condemnation of the roadblocks that had been tossed in Webster and the estate’s path in their attempt to obtain the benefits.
Which brings me to a couple of points that should be kept in mind in reading the Times article and considering the value of the NFL’s new program that the article praises. First, I suspect that the pension plan/disability plan system that the Webster family targeted provides far greater benefits than does this separate plan discussed in the article. If so, the idea that former players should pursue help under that program, rather than through the pension plan, is a disservice to retired players. Second, again if I am right about the greater benefits available under the pension/disability plan, then one has to wonder whether the separate NFL plan discussed in this article, although commendable for providing some help to aging players, actually serves as something of a Trojan horse (not a perfect analogy, I know) that, intentionally or otherwise, draws retired players away from seeking the larger payouts of the pension/disability system and instead to this plan. And third, given that a leading federal court of appeals with a significant track record in ERISA cases has already found that the NFL’s pension and disability plan actually does cover brain injuries of this type, the article is simply off-base in stating that dementia falls outside of the plan.
The article notes the relevance of this issue to some high profile recent players, such as Ted Johnson of the Patriots, 34, whose doctors”said he was exhibiting the depression and memory lapses associated with oncoming Alzheimer’s.” Those players should, notwithstanding this article, first be looking to the NFL’s pension and disability plans, particularly in light of the Fourth Circuit’s ruling in the Webster case, for compensation and care, before settling for the limited assistance provided by this alternative plan.
And finally, this whole matter brings me back to an issue I have talked about in the past, about questionable decision making by courts concerning what decisions to publish and what ones not to publish in the ERISA context. The Fourth Circuit’s decision in the Webster case, to my recollection, was not marked for publication (you can locate it, however, at my earlier post on that case). Yet, really, the scope of NFL plan benefits for this type of mental injury had never been resolved before, and it remains, as this article in the Times reflects, not well understood, making this an opinion that probably should have been published, and should not have been part of what I have called in the past “the hidden law of ERISA.”
Insurance Brokers as ERISA Defendants
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Roy Harmon, over at his Health Plan Law blog, has his typically scholarly take on two recent rulings out of the United States District Court for the District of New Hampshire in the case of Hopper v. Standard Insurance Company. The rulings primarily revolve around the question of which claims in the lawsuit are preempted under ERISA, and the law, reasoning and rulings of the court on these issues is consistent with First Circuit law, which grants a pretty broad sweep to ERISA preemption. What caught my eye about the case, however, and was of particular interest to me, was the discussion of whether the claims against one of the defendant entities that was involved in the insurance program at issue, namely the insurance broker, were preempted. The court, in one of its two rulings, determined that the broker did not play the role of a fiduciary, was not subject to ERISA, and that the claims against it were not preempted as a result. The court explained:
Hopper's misrepresentation claims against WGA [the insurance broker], however, are different. Unlike Standard, which functions as an ERISA entity, see Hampers, 202 F.3d at 53 (citing Stetson v. PFL Ins. Co., 16 F. Supp. 2d 28, 33 (D. Me. 1998))(explaining that the "primary ERISA entities are the employer, the plan, the plan fiduciaries, and the beneficiaries of the plan"), WGA is strictly an insurance broker, engaged in sales and marketing functions.
WGA had no direct control over Standard's insurance policy or the benefits plan. WGA did not administer the plan, and did not determine participant eligibility for benefits or consider appeals of benefit denial. Put differently, Hopper's claims against WGA are limited to WGA's "role as a seller of insurance, not as an administrator of an employee benefits plan." Woodworker's Supply, Inc. v. Principal Mut. Life Ins. Co., 170 F.3d 985, 991 (10th Cir. 1999).
This result is consistent with the underlying goal of ERISA "to protect the interests of employees and other beneficiaries of employee benefit plans." Morstein v. Nat'l Ins. Servs., Inc., 93 F.3d 715, 723 (11th Cir. 1996). "If ERISA preempts a beneficiary's potential cause of action for misrepresentation, employees, beneficiaries, and employers choosing among various plans will no longer be able to rely on the representations of the insurance agent regarding the terms of the plan." Id. As a result "[t]hese employees, whom Congress sought to protect, will find themselves unable to make informed choices regarding available benefit plans where state law places the duty on agents to deal honestly with applicants." Id. at 723-24.
Accordingly, Hopper's misrepresentation claims against WGA are not preempted by ERISA.
I think at least this part of the ruling, though arguable, is correct, so I don’t have any real quibble with it. What catches my eye, however, is the issue it raises, of whether an entity involved with an ERISA governed plan is better off staying out of the eye of the storm by avoiding a role that would grant it fiduciary status, or is instead better off playing a large enough role in the administration of the plan to end up being assigned that status. Falling outside of the ERISA framework leaves the entity exposed, as was the broker here, to a range of common law and state statutory claims; indeed, the potential exposure of such a defendant is limited only by the imagination of plaintiffs’ lawyers (and to a certain degree, the actual facts). On the other hand, coming within the realm of entities regulated by ERISA would preclude those types of claims from being asserted against the entity, while limiting recovery to that which is authorized by ERISA.
Granted, it is probably not something that the insurance broker in the Hopper case gave any thought to at the commencement of its involvement with the plan in question, but it might be something for any entity playing a role in an ERISA governed plan to consider at the outset of their retention: should they put themselves in a position to be a fiduciary subject to ERISA, or should they avoid that like the plague?
Mike Webster, the NFL and ERISA
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They say that professional football is far and away the most successful entertainment business - let alone sports league - in the country, but behind the scenes all is not tea and roses, quite clearly. Anyone who follows the sport knows the physical toll it takes on many of its best players, and a dark story of that aspect of the sport has been playing out in the courts for some time now, involving the debilitating injuries, and subsequent claim for disability benefits, of one of football’s bigger stars, the former Pittsburgh Steelers center Mike Webster. Webster, we learn from a lawsuit his estate brought seeking higher benefits than those awarded to him by the administrator of the National Football League’s retirement plan, “was diagnosed in 1998 with brain damage resulting from multiple head injuries he incurred while playing football.” He thereafter received from the retirement plan the lesser of two possible disability benefit awards available under the league’s retirement plan.
Lawyers for Webster eventually sued the retirement plan, alleging that the plan was governed by ERISA and that the plan administrator abused its discretion in denying the higher of the benefit awards to Webster, and in awarding him only the lower of the two. Discretion was reserved to the administrator in no uncertain terms, and yet the courts had no trouble concluding that the discretion had been abused, and in therefore overruling the plan’s benefit decision. As any of you who practice in this field or regularly read this blog know, a finding that an administrator acted arbitrarily and capriciously and abused its discretion - warranting rejection of the administrator’s determination - is a relatively uncommon event.
As a result, when one gets beyond the sports story interest raised by the case, the interesting question that is left behind is what was it about the administrator’s determination that drove the court to such a conclusion. And the answer to that question is telling: the Fourth Circuit had little trouble concluding that an abuse of discretion had occurred because “[w]hile recognizing that the decisions of a neutral plan administrator are entitled to great deference, we are nevertheless constrained to find on these facts that the Board lacked substantial evidence to justify its denial here. In particular, the Board ignored the unanimous medical evidence, including that of its own expert, disregarded the conclusion of its own appointed investigator, and relied for its determination on factors disallowed by the Plan.”
Well, if you think about it, how can those facts be anything but an abuse of discretion? And in many ways, that is what is different about this case from most denial of benefit cases, in which claimants routinely assert that an administrator wrongly weighed the evidence in the administrative record and therefore committed an abuse of discretion; in those typical cases, the evidence in the administrative record is subject to differing possible conclusions, and ERISA grants the administrator - so long as it was granted discretion by the plan documents - the freedom to select which of those possible conclusions should apply. Here, however, the administrator was not picking among possible conclusions warranted by the evidence, but was instead selecting a conclusion that was entirely contradicted by the overwhelming - and it appears possibly unanimous - evidence before it. That, we see quite clearly in this case, is beyond the outer edge of an administrator’s discretion.
The case, which is interesting for those of you interested in football, in Mike Webster, or in ERISA, is Sunny Jani, Administrator of the Estate of Michael L. Webster v. the Bert Bell/Pete Rozelle NFL Player Retirement Plan, out of the Fourth Circuit this week.
The Supreme Court, Abatie and Conflicts of Interest
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I have written extensively before - including both here and here -about Abatie v. Alta Health, the Ninth Circuit’s relatively recent decision revising that circuit’s approach to structural conflicts of interest and the effect such conflicts should have on the standard of review in denial of benefit cases. The Ninth Circuit’s new rule, I noted, placed it in conflict with the position of other circuits on the same issue, most notably, for purposes of this blog, the First Circuit, whose approach is really diametrically opposed to that of the Ninth Circuit on this issue.
The internet is abuzz today with the story of the Supreme Court remanding a denied benefits case back to the Ninth Circuit for further consideration in light of the intervening decision from that circuit in Abatie. SCOTUS blog, really the gold standard in Supreme Court coverage, has the story here, as well as links here to the petition for certiorari filed by the administrator/insurer and here to the Supreme Court order remanding the case for further consideration.
What is perhaps more interesting, to me anyway, is the unknown future of the remanded case in light of that remand. I have written before that Abatie itself reads as though it was written in the hope of becoming the vehicle for the Supreme Court to return to the issue of standards of review and the effect of conflicts of interest on the arbitrary and capricious standard of review. Can we look forward to seeing the newly remanded decision back up to the Supreme Court later, after further consideration by the Ninth Circuit of it in light of the principles enunciated in Abatie, as the vehicle for that inquiry?
On a side note, by the way, the petition for certiorari is itself a terrific review of the split among the circuits on the issues noted above.
Employee Welfare Benefit Plans and the Small Employer
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Preemption is a tough defense to get around, particularly in the First Circuit, where it is taken quite seriously and numerous decisions expressly declare particular state law causes of action to be preempted by ERISA. One clever response to this problem, at least when the facts will allow the argument, is to try to sidestep any fight over preemption itself by arguing that the benefit at issue was not even provided by an employee welfare benefit plan and that as a result, ERISA does not apply and state law claims over the denial of the benefits are actionable. There is more room to maneuver on such an argument than in a battle over preemption, because the test recognized in the First Circuit for determining whether a benefit was in fact provided by an employee welfare benefit plan is mutlipronged, fact based, and, on at least some elements of the test, rather amorphous. At the same time, however, it doesn't take much for an employee benefit to qualify as an ERISA governed employee welfare benefit plan, at least in this circuit.
The test is laid out and then explored in great detail in a recent decision, James O'Leary v. Provident Life and Accident Insurance Co., by Judge Saylor of the United States District Court here in Massachusetts. The court explained that "an employee welfare benefit plan has five elements: (1) a plan, fund, or program (2) established or maintained (3) by an employer or by an employee organization, or by both, (4) for the purpose of providing. . . disability. . . benefits (5) to participants or their beneficiaries," and that these are factual inquiries. In many instances involving larger employers, the application of these factors and the conclusion that should be reached are transparent from the outset; even without looking closely at the factors, there is little room to doubt that, for example, a large company's disability benefits plan for its employees satisfies these elements and is an ERISA governed plan.
What made the application of these factors interesting in the case before the court was the particular dynamic generated by the fact that it was a small employer and many of the facts at issue with regard to the employment benefit in question were unique to that one employee who was denied the benefits in question and was filing suit. This fact pattern took the case out of the realm of if it "looks like a duck and walks like a duck, its an employee welfare benefit plan," and placed it instead in the realm of coverages that might just be personal to the employee rather than part of an ERISA governed plan. It wasn't, the court eventually concluded, but the analysis in reaching that point is informative.
The Unum Provident Problem
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I have spent some time recently reading a draft version of Yale Professor John Langbein's article, Trust Law as Regulatory Law: The Unum/Provident Scandal and Judicial Review of Benefit Denials under ERISA. For those of you who have more socially redeeming hobbies (like mowing the lawn, watching paint dry, pretty much just about anything I suspect) than reading law review articles, the good professor essentially argues that the Unum Provident problem, referenced here, shows that the current regime under which ERISA benefit claims are litigated is one giant failure and that the Supreme Courts needs to alter the jurisprudence governing denied benefit claims. For those who would like more detail on what the article has to say in full, without having to spend the time reading the article in its entirety, the abstract of the article is here.
I have a few initial thoughts in response to the article, some of which perhaps I will flesh out in greater detail in future posts if time allows. Here they are, however, in a nut shell.
One, the good professor makes the case that Unum Provident's conduct in handling claims and the questionable conduct uncovered in investigations into its conduct show that the governing legal regime needs to be changed. Not really. To avoid the obvious fact that Unum Provident may simply be an outlier, which has already been caught by the system currently in place, Professor Langbein has to create a straw company, asserting that Unum Provident was caught, but only because it was clumsy and the regime should be fixed to protect against other companies acting the same way, only with more subtlety. I don't see any evidence that other companies are doing this, or that, if so, they are so good at what they are doing they won't be caught in the same way that Unum Provident was nabbed. Indeed, the professor points out that Unum Provident was partly caught by a long run of federal court decisions in which judges found Unum Provident's claims decisions to be highly questionable under the standards of review currently in force; a different insurer trying the same thing is going to run into the same problem. Hiding from shadows is what I would call it, changing an entire legal structure on the theory that somewhere, there might be someone doing something wrong, but we don't know about it.
Second, on a micro level, the truth is that unscrupulous claims handling of the kind described in the article is caught in litigation in the federal courts, and thus the improper rejection of a particular claimant's benefit claim can be and is resolved successfully under the current system and standards of review. In fact, if anything, we see courts providing an ever more skeptical review of administrators' decisions even under the arbitrary and capricious standard of review as it currently exists than we ever have, for the exact reason, I believe, of making sure no administrator is trying to hide improperly motivated decision making behind the cloak of judicial deference that is owed to an administrator who is acting with discretionary authority.
Third, on a macro level, litigation is an awfully blunt instrument for modifying long term corporate behavior, and I am skeptical that changing the standards of review that apply to denied benefit claims will have such an effect. It may well be that the combination of the current standards of review, which do contain effective protections of the rights of individual claimants, with a vigorous state level regulatory apparatus is the correct way to proceed. This combination did, after all, successfully handle the Unum Provident problem.
Fourth, I am not convinced that the Unum Provident problem really shows, as the article wants it to, a problem with courts relying on market place forces to provide some protection against biased and self-serving decision making by administrator/insurers. Courts assume that in the long run, such companies will be hurt by such conduct when competing for business in the marketplace, and that this will have a deterrent effect. Critics of this thinking like to point to Unum Provident and its size in the market to prove otherwise. But I am not sure it proves anything of the sort. As the professor points out, Unum Provident is the product of a series of mergers and acquisitions, and one has to ask whether a company that stands accused of the type of misconduct that Unum Provident is charged with could have grown so large organically. Unum Provident may well show that the problem/hole in the system is in the mergers and acquisition regime, not in the benefit review regime.
Finally, a quick note of thanks to Workplace Prof Blog and Benefits Blog, without whom I would never have noticed the professor's paper, since I generally don't spend time surfing faculty websites (their blogs, yes, but not their websites). You can find a link to the the actual paper, by the way, here.
Interpreting ERISA Plans and Insurance Policies
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ERISA on the web generally does a nice job of chronicling ERISA decisions out of the Eleventh Circuit, but one of its recent posts, about an August 8th decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, jumped out at me more than most. The post discusses the case of Billings v UNUM Life Insurance Company, a case involving whether a pediatrician was entitled to continued disability benefits after being disabled due to obsessive compulsive disorder, or whether, instead, the mental health limitation in the plan limited the length of time to which he was entitled to benefits. Although the case presents a somewhat unusual, and certainly curiosity invoking, fact pattern, that is not what drew my attention. Instead, what caught my eye when reading the post was that it discussed the decision and described the court's reasoning in a manner that made me think not of ERISA litigation, but instead of the other focus of this blog, insurance coverage litigation. As the post described and the court's opinion reflects, the Eleventh Circuit decided the question by applying rules of policy construction to the plan language at issue that we more often see in insurance coverage disputes, such as the doctrine of contra proferentem (a fancy way of saying construe ambiguities in the document against the drafter, which in the insurance context most often means against the insurer); the court then decided on that basis whether or not the plan language limited the physician's benefits.
The post left hanging the question of why such an approach was applied, rather than the more typical approach of the court yielding to the administrator's interpretation of the plan language and ultimate decision so long as both were reasonable and rationally supported by the evidence, but it was easy to guess the reason, and a quick jump over to the opinion itself confirmed it; the plan at issue did not grant discretion to the plan administrator, meaning that the court, and not the administrator, was the ultimate decision maker on the issues presented by the claim.
What interested me most about the case, and the post, was that it illustrated the extent to which if you remove the deferential standard of review usually required of courts deciding benefit cases under ERISA from the equation, they would become, essentially, insurance coverage cases, consisting of a dispute over the plan language and an eventual decision by a court over which interpretation - that favored by the plan or that favored by the claimant - should be selected, with the outcome of that determination essentially deciding who wins. That is insurance coverage litigation in a nutshell, but normally is not ERISA benefits litigation in a nutshell.
Long Term Disabilty Benefits, Human Behavior and Standards of Review
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An article in the New York Times yesterday on men who simply won't go back to work caught my eye because at times expressly and at other times by implication, it delves into the potent mix of cultural and behavioral forces that seem to impact what we offhandedly refer to as "work ethic." The behavioral and cultural issues noted in the article circle back to an interesting point in litigation involving ERISA governed long term disability plans, which is that - so long as certain legal requirements are met - the plans and their administrators have a great deal of discretion in deciding whether or not someone is disabled or should, instead, be expected to return to work in some capacity or another. In real world terms, in the course of litigation, this grant of discretion provides plans and administrators with a certain amount of power over plan beneficiaries with regard to the question of whether the beneficiary is truly disabled or instead belongs at work.
The general ins and outs of the discretion granted to administrators in that circumstance, I won't discuss in much detail here. For present purposes, it is sufficient to note that when an ERISA governed disability plan grants the administrator discretion in interpreting and applying the plan's terms, the administrator has a great deal of latitude in its decision making, generally subject only to the requirement that the decision be reasonable (with the case law providing further detail as to what reasonable means in that context). This issue is delved into in more detail here. Although lawyers for claimants often object to this line of thinking, this grant of discretion is usually considered to be acceptable on the thesis that it fits with Congress' intention to encourage employers, by making it relatively easy to provide them and by limiting employers' exposure to liability, to provide such benefits.
But the New York Times article points to another possible - and real world - justification for granting such discretion to plans and their administrators, and for granting them great leeway in determining whether a claimant is sufficiently employable to be expected to work rather than collect long term disability benefits. Discussing disability benefits under social security, the article points out:
The ailments that qualify them are usually real, like back pain, heart trouble or mental illness. But in some cases, the illnesses are not so serious that they would prevent people from working if a well-paying job with benefits were an option.The disability program, in turn, is an obstacle to working again. Taking a job holds the risk of demonstrating that one can earn a living and is thus no longer entitled to the monthly payments. But staying out of work has consequences. Skills deteriorate, along with the desire for a paying job and the habits that it requires.
"The longer you stay on disability benefits," said Martin H. Gerry, deputy commissioner for disability and income security at the Social Security Administration, "the longer you're out of the work force, the less likely you are to go back to work."
Now I have no basis to know whether these statements are correct, or whether there is independent research to support - or for that matter to discredit - these points. If true, however, they may suggest an independent justification - possibly intended but more likely simply fortuitous - for granting such authority to plans and their administrators, namely that it may counterbalance a disabled employee's own tendency to prefer the safe harbor of disability benefits to the riskier and harder course of returning to work.