New Jersey Disability Lawyer Blog

Reliance Standards’ unreasonable and bad faith claims handling , was carefully scrutinized by Judge Reeves, sitting in the Southern District of Mississippi. Reliance and its competitors in the industry, as the Judge notes, “have conflicting missions of deciding who qualifies for benefits and ensuring those decisions do not undermine their own bottom line.” Nichols v.…

Our clients often ask how to retain employee benefits while on disability leave. A source of this information should be an employee handbook or summary of benefits available from the employer. Often all benefits such as medical coverage or life insurance continues while the employee is on short term disability. Then if the employee does…

We often suggest to our clients that they carefully limit their exposure on social media. It is simple for insurance companies to track a claimant’s whereabouts if they are regularly posting on Facebook, and not making it private, uploading pictures on Instagram, or other people are tagging them in photos or discussing their whereabouts. An…

An action taken by the U.S. Department of Labor to protect the disabled fortunately passed on December 19, 2016, on the eve of the Obama’s departure and will go into effect January 1, 2018. Claimants counsel breathed a sigh of relief when the amendments to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) remained…

We have been following the Courts’ treatment of mental or nervous disorders limitations in group long term disability policies. (See blog, Disability Caused by Physical Impairment, July 2015) Recently, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals joined other courts holding that a claimant is disabled by physical conditions alone, then the mere presence of a psychiatric…

Insurers often balk at paying a disability claim for a condition that has existed for a long time before the individual stops working. It seems that people that struggle to continue working despite progressive medical impairment are not rewarded for their heroism. An interesting case was recently published in California regarding a woman suffering from…

Physician Association Plans Qualify for Safe Harbor Protection

Disability insurers love to deny claims based on their medical consultant’s conclusion that the claimant has “sedentary capacity.” The insurer’s vocational counselor swiftly identifies various jobs that the claimant can allegedly perform without performing a full or fair investigation of the transferable skills. Does the inquiry end at the point it is established that the…

In a groundbreaking decision that coincides with the ruling from our Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Mirza v. Insurance Administrator of America, Inc., 800 F.3d 129 (3d Cir.2015) the First Circuit Court of Appeals decided that ERISA regulations require a plan administrator in its denial of benefits letter to inform a claimant of the…

There are two basic types of insurance coverage available for a disability that impairs ones’ ability to continue working, total disability or residual disability. “Residual disability” pertains to those participants who cannot perform all of their pre – disability material and substantial duties on a full time basis, but can perform them part -time, or…