On February 22, 2021, the United States Supreme Court declined to resolve a circuit split regarding the proper standard under which False Claims Act (“FCA”) claims in the medical.
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An Illinois federal court recently held that the failure to identify a contractual limitations period in a benefits denial letter renders the limitations period unenforceable, even before applicable regulations were changed to expressly require that the limitations period be included.
Hewitt v. Lincoln Financial Corp., 2021 WL 353884 (N.D. Ill. Feb. 2, 2021).
Rodney Hewitt applied for and was denied long term disability benefits in December 2013. The ERISA-governed disability policy provided that no claimant may initiate an action regarding an adverse benefit determination “more than three years after the time Proof of claim is required.” The denial letter informed Mr. Hewitt that he had the right to bring an action under ERISA but did not mention the policy’s three-year time limit to bring such an action. When Mr. Hewitt sued for benefits in December 2018, the defendants maintained that his claims were time-barre
Class discovery is inherently more limited than normal fact discovery for trial, and litigators understandably approach it in a more narrow fashion than they would trial discovery. The.
The Need for Compensable Damage to Prove Standing
The United States Supreme Court has issued a decision in
Spokeo v. Robbins. In this Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) case, the Supreme Court considered whether Congress can confer Article III standing on a plaintiff s right to bring an action based on a violation of a statute where that plaintiff has not otherwise suffered a concrete injury. The Supreme Court concluded that a plaintiff must suffer an injury-in-fact that is concrete and particularized to satisfy Article III standing, but it offered little guidance on what those terms mean.
Courts in the Seventh, Ninth, and Eleventh Circuits have all weighed-in on the standard. The Ninth Circuit explained that a procedural harm from a letter that allegedly failed to clearly identify the current creditor was insufficient. The Eleventh Circuit explained that a plaintiff lacks standing to bring a Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) case absent a showing of how the plaintiff wa