An Iowa woman filed a disability insurance lawsuit against Unum Life Insurance Company alleging the company prematurely terminated her long-term disability benefits without citing any evidence that her condition improved.

Plaintiff Amy W. had disability insurance with Unum through her employer. When she was diagnosed with deep vein thrombosis during pregnancy, which caused complications that required two surgeries, she began receiving benefits from Unum.

According to the Unum lawsuit, the disability insurance company paid Amy’s disability benefits between July 2003 to June 2004 and then determined there was a lack of clinical findings to support further payments.

After Amy provided additional medical and surgical records, Unum reversed its decision and reinstated disability benefits in August 2004. The plaintiff says she continued to receive Unum disability benefits until 2009.

However, beginning in 2006 the lawsuit claims that Unum began pressuring her to apply for Social Security disability. The Unum lawsuit states that this was “in hopes of incurring a benefit for themselves, in the form of overpayments once social security disability was awarded.”

The lawsuit alleges that in August 2009 she was awarded full Social Security disability benefits and once she had that Unum calculated an overpayment of more than $65,000

Again in 2013, Amy says she was advised that Unum was terminating her long-term disability benefits. Upon her appeal, Unum reinstated her benefits in March 2014. A month later, the lawsuit says, Unum again advised the plaintiff they would be terminating her benefits.

Amy says she once again appealed. In December 2014, according to the lawsuit, the insurance company informed her that its decision to terminate Unum disability benefits would stand.

The Unum claim denial lawsuit alleges that Unum acted in violation of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). In addition, Amy alleges that Unum failed to cite any medical testimony that that her condition had improved or even changed. She is seeking more than $75,000 in financial compensation.

Unum Unpaid Disability Benefits

Unum covers more than 17 million policyholders and is among the biggest players in the disability insurance market. Unum has been accused of denying insurance claims for the smallest of reasons and sometimes no reason whatsoever. This practice is referred to as “bad faith” insurance, meaning a decision to terminate or deny claims without a legitimate basis.

Over the years, hundreds of Unum lawsuits have accused the insurance company of various bad faith practices including:

• Claims representatives who take favorable opinions of nurses over physicians when it comes to disability reports
• Refusing to acknowledge a disability
• Misreading medical records in order to deny claims
• Investigations that are performed by biased and use unqualified “experts”
• Changing policies once claims are filed (and without the authorization or knowledge of policy holders)
• Omitting records to record reviewers when it would show a claimant as disabled

The Unum Bad Faith Insurance Lawsuit is Case No. 4:15-cv-00384-REL-HCA in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa.