Shawn E. McDermott - Blog

During this 110th Congress, there have been two proposed bills intended to amend the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (“ERISA”) to improve the protection of employee benefits, such as a employee’s long term disability (LTD) claim.

The first is a bill proposed by Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy, of the Fourth District of New York, titled the “Equality for Workers under ERISA Act of 2007.” HR2622. This very short amendment to the ERISA statute would simply add a paragraph to Section 502(e) to clarify that any civil action commenced in court shall be decided by the court as a “de novo” proceeding without any deference to any claim determination made prior to commencement of such actions. In other words, the judge reviewing a (more…)

The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a decent decision in favor of an ERISA long term disability benefit claimant on May 7, 2007 in the case of Bishop v. LTD Plan of SAP America, Inc and LINA (Cigna), 2007 WL 1314523. The appeals court overturned an Oklahoma district court judge which had been favorable to LINA. Of particular interest was the Court’s rejection of LINA’s use of the DOT definitions of “sedentary” when the insurance policy language defines disability in terms of a claimant’s inability to perform “his occupation.” In this new case, Mr. Bishop was a technology consultant for SAP whose job required extension travel. The insurance company failed to consider travel as an essential duty of his job. Instead, in terminating his long term disability benefits, LINA determined (more…)