Short & Long Term Disability Cases We’ve Won for Our Clients Liberty Mutual

A store manager for a large national retailer in Montana developed severe respiratory difficulties and Cushing’s disease. Shortly after, she filed a claim for Long Term Disability benefits. She received benefits for approximately one year, when the insurance company suddenly said her condition had improved enough to allow her to return to work at a number of desk jobs.

She submitted an appeal, but during the review process she became increasingly skeptical that Liberty Mutual wasn’t handling the claim fairly. She found Fields Law Firm and our attorneys collaborated with her to quickly collect medical records and narrative reports. After reviewing the medical records, our attorneys referred our client to a functional capacity evaluation. Just a few weeks after she hired Fields Law, our attorneys submitted the medical records, report, and evaluation to the insurance company along with a memorandum outlining our client’s legal rights under the statute governing the policy. After a brief review, Libtery Mutual reversed its decision started paying our client’s claim.

A Minnesota woman had worked for a large nationwide bank as a loan documentation specialist, a sedentary position that was clerical in nature. However, she was forced to stop working as a result of her severe anxiety. She had applied for and been granted Short Term Disability benefits from the insurance company. But just three months later, the payments stopped without warning. The insurance company claimed to have had her medical records “peer reviewed” by a physician who had never even met her, and even had the audacity to call the severity of her conditions into question.

She wanted to appeal the insurance company’s decision, but needed professional expertise. She went straight to Fields Law, and our qualified experts analyzed her case and began writing her appeal. Our attorneys argued that the insurer had erred in relying on the opinions of the independent doctor and ignored substantial medical evidence in our client’s claim. Further, we highlighted the records which best demonstrated the severity of our client’s condition. Faced with our arguments, the insurance company returned a decision within a month overturning their previous denial and reinstated our client’s benefits.

A packager in a factory worked for many years until she became disabled due to chronic back pain. Initially, the insurance company began paying her Long Term Disability benefits. However, Liberty Mutual later denied her benefits after 32 months, alleging that her medical records did not continue to support severe and incapacitating symptoms that would warrant work in any capacity beyond that date.

Frustrated and confused because she knew she could not return to work in her condition, she called Fields Law Firm for help in appealing the insurance company’s discontinuation of her benefits. The Fields Law team prepared a strong appeal letter for our client, in which we exposed the fact that Liberty Mutual had applied the wrong standard of disability in discontinuing her benefits. Our client’s policy provided for payment of disability based on an inability to perform the duties of her “own occupation” for 36 months. At the time of its discontinuation, our client did not need to prove she was unable to work “in any capacity” in order to remain eligible for benefits.

The appeal prepared by Fields Law showed that Liberty Mutual had breached its fiduciary duty to our client by misusing video surveillance. The appeal also highlighted why the insurance company should not have ignored the Social Security Administration’s finding that our client is totally disabled from any job in the national economy. In the end, Fields Law was successful in appealing Liberty Mutual’s decision and our client’s benefits were reinstated.