January 2013 Archives

Last week, the American Conference Institute (ACI), one of the industry leading organizations on educating the insurance industry, conducted its conference on Litigating Disability Insurance Claims. Jason Newfield was again invited to participate as a Speaker. His topic, “Surveillance – A Good Idea? Can it help or hurt a Disability Claim” was well received by […]

Another Federal Court has adopted the approach of conducting a trial in an ERISA disability insurance benefits case, increasing the trend which only several years ago was unheard of. A Court in West Virginia has determined that “because there are numerous genuine issues of material fact which conflicting inferences may be drawn from the evidence […]

Another Federal Court has determined that a long term disability insurance company failed to engage in a reasoned and principled decision making process in the review and consideration of a claimant’s benefits. In determining that United of Omaha failed its obligations under ERISA, a Federal judge denied a motion for summary judgment and remanded the […]

A Federal judge in Ohio has determined that CIGNA wrongfully terminated a long term disability insurance claim, where it failed to properly consider the occupational requirements for the claimant, and where it failed to account for the claimant’s receipt of Social Security disability benefits. The claimant, an employee of Pfizer, working as a Senior Professional […]

We have to hand it to Hartford – when it comes to disability insurance, they are really good at marketing products and its recently created Disability FLEX product is no exception. For employees, buying a long term disability insurance policy used to be a one-size-fits-all transaction. The employee benefits coordinator purchased the policy and employees […]

An article in the Baltimore Sun reveals the human side of the massive backlog of Social Security disability cases that is stunning to even the most jaded reader. Almost 2,000 individuals who were attempting to get disability payments from the SSDI program were dismissed because the claimants died while waiting. The claims process takes years […]

A New York Federal Judge has determined that Hartford Insurance abused its discretion in denying a claim for long term disability insurance benefits to a claimant who worked for JP Morgan Chase. The Court reached its decision despite finding that Hartford Insurance’s structural conflict of interest was not a factor in its claim decision. The […]

We Americans are not the only ones with long term disability insurance problems. Jason Reed, a British blogger for the Huffington Post, recently reported on a scenario that sounds very much like our own. Many disabled workers in England are treated as if they are taking money fraudulently while in fact they are suffering from […]