Views of the opposing counsel

It is always useful to understand the viewpoint of the opposing counsel.
DRI - that claims itself to be the "Voice of the Defense Bar" is one such organization.
According to the article at
"The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) promised to establish a nationally uniform, inexpensive and efficient way to adjudicate and review plan participants’ benefit claims, and to encourage employers to adopt pension and employee welfare benefit plans. According to the United States Supreme Court, ERISA has the “policy of inducing employers to employers or insurance companies) who both decide and pay claims operate under an inherent conflict of interest and, if the plan vests discretion to the administrator, a reviewing court must consider that conflict in deciding if a claim has been denied arbitrarily and capriciously. Although that holding was not a great departure from the law of most federal circuits, language in Glenn opened the door to potentially significant, costly and time-consuming discovery in ERISA litigation that most, if not all, circuits had previously barred. Moreover,
the lower courts’ application of that aspect of Glenn has been far from uniform, leaving
defendants in ERISA benefits actions subject to a wide variety of rules, principles,
and different expectations about the extent of permissible discovery depending on the jurisdiction in which suit is filed.

This article briefly describes how the various circuit courts of appeal—and district courts within those circuits—have applied Glenn with respect to discovery offer benefits by assuring a predictable set of liabilities, under uniform standards of primary conduct and a uniform regime of ultimate remedial orders and awards when a violation occurs."


While the objectives are noble, one should note that implementation has been faulty, to say the least. There are plenty of stories which detail how insurance companies have misused the regulations in the guise of the law. At this blog, we will continue to detail such stories and help promote awareness among the general population of  the pitfalls of this regulation.