A disabled North Carolina woman has filed a bad faith insurance lawsuit against Unum Life Insurance Company, alleging the company wrongfully denied long-term disability benefits under her employer’s plan.

Long-term disability benefits provide financial benefits to employees when they are unable to work due to a disability regardless of whether or not that illness or injury is work-related.

Plaintiff Tekayla P., a former employee of State Employees Credit Union, recently became all too familiar with the allegedly unfair disability insurance claim denial practices Unum has been accused of using for years when she tried to claim disability benefits after she became disabled and was no longer able to work.

Tekayla filed a claim for long-term disability benefits but was denied, allegedly with disregard to relevant evidence pertaining to her disability.

Tekayla is not alone as Unum’s bad faith insurance tactics of wrongfully denying disability insurance claims is the foundation for a growing number of Unum disability benefits lawsuits.

Plaintiff Tekayla is seeking payment of all long term disability benefits as well as attorney’s fees and cost.

Unum Bad Faith Insurance Denial Tactics

Unum and its subsidiaries have repeatedly been found liable for questionable practices relating to denied disability claims. Some of the most common insurance claim denial tactics reportedly utilized by Unum are:

Misreading medical records. Courts have reversed insurance claim denial decisions from Unum due to inaccurate conclusions from medical records in order to deny claims. Unum has also been shown to provide record reviewers with incomplete files of medical records, omitting evidence that shows a claimant as disabled.

Improper claims investigations by obtaining opinions from biased, sometimes unqualified “experts.” Unum utilizes a variety of staff and outside experts on their payroll to evaluate new and existing claims. Sometimes, claim representatives allegedly have taken the opinion of an in-house nurse that favored a denial of benefits over a physician’s opinion of disability.

Such tactics fall under bad faith insurance, and if an insurer has committed bad faith practices, policyholders whose claims have been improperly or unreasonably denied or delayed may be eligible to file a complaint against the insurance company.

Unum Lawsuits

Unum claim denial lawsuits are personal injury cases that seek compensation for individuals who have been victimized by Unum Insurance bad faith practices.

The Unum Group was previously known as Unum Provident and currently includes a number of smaller subsidiaries, including (not limited to) Provident Life and The Paul Revere Life Insurance Company.

If you have been unfairly denied disability insurance benefits by Unum after providing records of proven debilitating conditions, you may be eligible to file an Unum lawsuit.

The Unum Bad Faith Insurance Lawsuit is Case No. 6:15-cv-03738 in the U.S. District Court Southern District of South Carolina, Greenville Division.