An individual suffering from a disabling condition undoubtedly has many concerns. In addition to dealing with physical pain and emotional distress, there is always the thought of how to pay for medical bills and living expenses if the disability prevents the person from continuing work.

It can be stressful and time consuming for a disabled claimant to fight for long-term disability benefits (“LTD”) provided under an ERISA-governed employee benefit plan. However, a recent District Court case, Carrier v. Aetna Life Insurance Company, 2015 WL 4511620 (C.D. Cal. July 24, 2015), may help insureds by making it more difficult for insurance companies/claim administrators to summarily deny an insured’s claim without proof of specific findings and details as to how and why they reached their conclusion to deny benefits.

Gloria Carrier was employed by Bank of America as a Credit Administrator. Her job duties included clearly communicating risk analysis, identifying problems on credit-related issues, guidelines and policies, performing research on closed loans and supervising between twenty and 100 people across multiple states. After being diagnosed with uterine cancer, she had to have her uterus removed and subsequently underwent three cycles of chemotherapy. After her surgery and chemotherapy, her cognitive abilities were severely affected and, according to her treating physician, she suffered from severe depression and suicidal thoughts.

Carrier initially received short-term disability (“STD”) benefits under her employee benefit plan issued by Aetna Life Insurance Company. After the expiration of her STD benefits, she applied for LTD benefits under the plan. Although Carrier was initially awarded LTD benefits, Aetna decided to terminate them a few months later “based on its determination that she no longer met the definition of disability,” despite her treating physician’s opinion that she continued to suffer from major depression and cognitive disorder that prevented her from performing her normal job duties. Aetna’s decision was based on peer evaluations conducted by three Aetna retained doctors of the plaintiff’s treating physician’s records and office notes. Aetna then upheld the denial decision on appeal.

During litigation, the district court conducted a de novo review of the claim decision, and determined that Carrier’s benefits were improperly terminated. In finding that plaintiff’s claim for LTD benefits was wrongfully terminated, the court found that the opinions of Aetna’s physicians were “presented in a conclusory fashion, making it unclear how they reached such starkly contrasting results from those of [plaintiff’s treating physician], despite reviewing the same materials.” The court found the opinions of plaintiff’s treating physician that she suffered from severe depression and cognitive disabilities that prevented her from performing her job under the “own occupation” definition of “disability” to be more compelling. Although it indicated that there was no legal deference to the treating physician’s opinion, the court’s ruling demonstrates that insurance companies who rely upon peer-to-peer evaluations in evaluating and potentially denying a LTD claim must ensure that a detailed analysis has been conducted, rather than a simple blanket/conclusory conclusion made without meeting or treating the insured.

The court awarded Carrier LTD benefits for a portion of the period she was wrongfully denied benefits and remanded the action to the plan administrator to resolve a secondary issue regarding a change in the policy’s language from “own occupation” to “any occupation” that went into effect while the initial dispute was being litigated.