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
Long Term Disability Benefits
Still More on Structural Conflicts of Interest
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
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…
Current First Circuit Thinking on Structural Conflicts of Interest
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…
Mike Webster to Ted Johnson: Are the NFL and the New York Times Kidding?
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…
Insurance Brokers as ERISA Defendants
By Stephen Rosenberg on
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…
Mike Webster, the NFL and ERISA
By Stephen Rosenberg on
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…
The Supreme Court, Abatie and Conflicts of Interest
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…
Employee Welfare Benefit Plans and the Small Employer
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…
The Unum Provident Problem
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…