National Football League (“NFL”) players are covered by an employer-sponsored long-term disability (“LTD”) policy called the Bert Bell/Pete Rozelle NFL Player Retirement Plan (“Plan”).  This NFL Plan, like most employer long-term disability plans, is governed by ERISA.  Therefore, disabled NFL players face many of the same evidential challenges as company-bound employees when filing a claim for disability.  These similarities are evidenced in the recent decision, Dimry v. Bert Bell/Pete Rozelle NFL Player Retirement Plan, 2020 WL 5526607 (N.D. Cal. Sept. 15, 2020)(“Dimry”).  The court held in Dimry that Plan administrator (“Bert Bell”) abused its discretion when denying Mr. Dimry’s disability claim primarily for the following reasons: (1) Bert Bell did not provide Dimry with a “full and fair” review; (2) Bert Bell demanded “objective evidence” which was not required by the Plan; and (3) Bert Bell failed to consider Mr. Dimry’s Social Security award.

Dimry originally filed a complaint against Bert Bell to recover LTD benefits in 2016.  Shortly after, the Social Security Administration (“SSA”) found that Dimry had been disabled since 2012.  The district court found that Bert Bell had abused its discretion when it denied Mr. Dimry’s LTD claim because it ignored two reports from Mr. Dimry’s treating physicians in favor of two so-called “neutral physicians” who were paid almost $300,000 by Bert Bell to review claims.  The district judge found in favor of Dimry finding Bert Bell had abused its discretion since the denial of Mr. Dimry’s benefits claim was “based upon an unreasonable bias in favor of Plan-selected physicians” and remanded the matter to Bert Bell to re-evaluate Mr. Dimry’s disability claim.  On remand, Bert Bell relied on the Plan’s medical director, Dr. Jackson, who opined that Mr. Dimry’s primary impairment appeared to be pain and subjective complaints that were not supported by objective evidence.  Relying on Dr. Jackson’s report, Bert Bell again denied Mr. Dimry’s claim.  Another lawsuit followed.

Dimry first argued that there was a conflict of interest because the three physicians who had reviewed his claim were biased since the first two physician reviewers had been paid almost $300,000 and Dr. Jackson had been paid $223,000 by the Plan.  The court explained that “Even apart from any issue preclusion that may apply given the Dimry I court’s findings, under Demer ‘[t]he magnitudes of these numbers, particularly when combined, raise a fair inference that there is a financial conflict which influenced the [the physicians’] assessments.’ Demer, 835 F.3d at 902.” 

Dimry next argued that he was excluded from Bert Bell’s “review of his claim following the remand in violation of the requirement that there be ‘a meaningful dialogue between ERISA plan administrators and their beneficiaries’ and that the Plan give a ‘full and fair review’ to an appeal of an adverse benefits determination.”  A full and final review requires giving the claimant an opportunity “to submit written comments, documents, records, and other information relating to the claim for benefits” and provide the claimant with any new or additional evidence, as soon as possible, to give the claimant an opportunity to respond.  In Dimry, not only did Bert Bell not provide Dr. Jackson’s report to Mr. Dimry, Bert Bell never informed Dimry that it was consulting Dr. Jackson or that he was issuing a report which it intended to rely on.  The Court held that by excluding Dimry from the renewed review, Bert Bell was in violation of “the rule that there be a meaningful dialogue between ERISA plan administrators and their beneficiaries.”

Next, Dimry challenged Bert Bell’s finding that the objective medical evidence did not support his claims of neck and back pain.  Although Dr. Jackson opined “that Mr. Dimry’s pain complaints could be accurate despite not being fully supported by the objective medical evidence given the nature of his impairment,” Bert Bell made no attempt to follow up with Mr. Dimry’s complaints of pain.  The Court agreed with Dimry that requiring objective evidence to support his pain complaints was “illogical and without support in inferences that may be drawn from the facts in the record.”  First, the Plan did not contain language limiting benefits to claimants that can provide objective evidence to support subjective complaints of pain.  Second, the Court found that while Bert Bell “may consider the lack of objective medical evidence in making a benefits determination, ‘reliance on objective evidence can be problematic for medical conditions that are not amenable to objective verification.’”

Lastly, Dimry insisted Bert Bell abused its discretion when it failed to acknowledge Mr. Dimry’s social security award.  In response, Bert Bell attempted to assert the following justifications for disregarding the SSA’s award decision: First, the SSA was somehow incomplete as it did not have and/or consider the Plan’s physician’s reports when it made its determination.  However, the court did not find this argument convincing.  Instead the court found Bert Bell “acted as an adversary, not a fiduciary,” and stated Bert Bell’s rejection of the SSA “is particularly striking where, as here, [Bert Bell’s] non-disability finding was based on the absence of objective evidence, and the [SSA] discussed the objective evidence in Mr. Dimry’s Social Security file at length – none of which Dr. Jackson reviewed.”  Second, Bert Bell contended that since Mr. Dimry’s social security was rejected twice before it was granted, this constitutes evidence that reasonable minds could differ as to whether Dimry was disabled and precludes a finding that Bert Bell’s finding of no disability was arbitrary.  The court again disagreed and explained, “[w]hile [Bert Bell] was not required to accept the [SSA’s] opinion, it had to consider it and explain why it was not persuasive.”  Third, Bert Bell claimed that “[t]he Social Security decision turned on factors that are irrelevant to a finding of total and permanent disability under the Plan, such as [Mr. Dimry’s] education and work experience.”  The court also rejected this argument stating that based on the relevant medical evidence, Mr. Dimry’s education and/or work experience had “nothing to do [with] whether the medical evidence fully supported Mr. Dimry’s pain complaints.”  Finally, Bert Bell argued that it, unlike the SSA, was not required to give substantial weight to Mr. Dimry’s treating physician.  While the court agreed that Bert Bell was not bound by the SSA’s treating physician rule, Bert Bell was also not allowed to simply discount the SSA’s ruling.

The lawsuit eventually resulted with the Court’s finding that Bert Bell had abused its discretion and remanded Mr. Dimry’s case back to Bert Bell for a renewed evaluation of his claim.  The Court also stated that it “expects that once [Bert Bell] gives Dimry the full and final review ERISA requires, and eliminates the mandate of objective evidence – a mandate not in the Plan and not in Dr. Jackson’s reports – that Dimry will be found disabled under the Plan. 

We often see LTD claims denied without a full and fair review provided to our clients.  We often see plan administrators/insurers who use biased physicians who conduct cursory paper reviews, who wrongfully rely on the lack of objective evidence to deny LTD claims and who do not meaningfully address favorable SSA determinations.  If you believe your LTD claim was denied without a full and fair review for any of the reasons discussed above, please contact us for a free consultation by calling our office at 949-387-9595 or completing the contact form on our website.