This is the Sixth Circuit oral argument:Beth Jordan challenged the decision of a lower court that favored Reliance Standard Life Insurance Company in a case about her long-term disability benefits from August 2, 2016, to September 18, 2017. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, disagreed with the lower court and sent the case back, telling them to grant Jordan her long-term disability benefits.Reliance Standard had been paying Jordan disability benefits since July 2009 because she couldn't work as a nurse anesthetist due to Lyme disease. However, in 2015, they stopped her benefits just before a policy change in how disability was defined. Jordan challenged this decision. When Reliance Standard didn't respond in time to her appeal, Jordan took the matter to court. The court initially told Jordan she should have completed all the required steps with Reliance Standard before going to court. Reliance Standard then asked Jordan to have an independent medical exam. By February 2018, when this happened, Jordan was already back at work. After the exam, Reliance Standard agreed to pay her benefits only up to August 1, 2016, and refused to pay after that, even though she didn't start working again until September 2017 and had been treated for breast cancer.When Jordan took her case to court a second time, the lower court found that Reliance Standard didn't properly consider Jordan's and her doctor's views and the reviews they relied on weren't good enough. The court sent the case back to Reliance Standard to give better reasons for their decision and to properly consider Jordan's situation. However, Reliance Standard didn't change its decision, and this time the lower court agreed with them.But, when Jordan appealed again, the Sixth Circuit Court found that Reliance Standard's reasons for denying benefits weren't backed up by strong medical evidence and they didn't make their decision fairly. The court said Reliance Standard didn't pay enough attention to Jordan's doctor and relied too much on their own doctors, whose opinions weren't trustworthy. The court also found it wrong that Reliance Standard didn't share Jordan's doctor's letter, which disagreed with their views, with their reviewers. The court didn't accept Reliance Standard's use of surveillance from 2015, as the dispute was about a period after August 2016, and they kept paying Jordan even after the surveillance. The court believed Jordan's doctor proved she deserved the benefits. Instead of sending the case back to Reliance Standard again, the court decided that Jordan should win the case.These public domain recordings are brought to you by Ben Glass Law, a national long term disability and life insurance firm headquartered in Fairfax, VA.By making these recordings into a "podcast," we've made the listening easier for claimants, attorneys and claims adjusters alike. If long term disability or life insurance benefits have been denied, we'd love to review your denial letter and give you a strategy for moving forward. This is a free service and you can go here to begin submitting your denial letter.

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