HOUSTON - April 12, 2016 - PRLog -- The Life Insurance Company of North America, or LINA, has taken a legal position in a case involving a former employee of Chicago Bridge & Iron (CB&I). This could put benefits at risk for other employees. The employee, Mr. Brasseur, was denied benefits by LINA which wants to limit the scope of a recent federal court decision in Illinois that protects employees' rights in Illinois and that should protect them in other states, as well.
LINA is the insurer of CB&I's employee benefit plan, a plan which provides benefits to the Chicago company's thousands of employees. CB&I is a multi-national engineering and technical services firm with employees worldwide, including in many of the 50 states.
Insurers like LINA have been able to deny employee benefits claims and skirt liability with impunity for decades, due to federal legislation known as ERISA. In 2005, the Illinois legislature enacted legislation to limit insurers' ability to deny employee benefit claims with impunity. Illinois declared the practice of insurers insulating their decisions from court scrutiny to be against public policy, as have almost half of the states in the country.
Insurers were not happy with this legislation. So LINA, Cigna, MetLife, Prudential, Liberty Life, Aetna and others began to challenge the law in the federal courts leading to the circuit court decision in Fontaine v. Metropolitan Life in September 2015. The decisive ruling determined that a covered employee residing in Illinois would be able to obtain a fair and impartial court review of the merits of the insurer's decision. This was a tremendous victory for employees of Illinois-based companies (not just CB&I).
Mr. Brasseur was a CAD/CAM engineer with CB&I working out of Houston when he became chronically ill. LINA denied his benefits. Represented by William Herren, he has requested an impartial court review of the merits of LINA's decision in a federal court in Houston. The Fontaine decision would make this process routine if he resided in Chicago. But wanting no part of a judge reviewing its decision, and in a move that it could not have made in Chicago, LINA renewed its challenge to the Illinois law in March 2016 and is now attempting to undermine the hard-fought gains made in Illinois [Brasseur v. LINA; U. S. Dist. Ct., So. Dist. TX, No. H-3570].
Upholding the spirit of the Illinois legislation was a long, difficult battle designed to protect employees. LINA's challenge in Texas is an assault on CB&I employees in Texas and elsewhere that could erase all the work that has been done in the last 10 years. If LINA's challenge succeeds, benefits due to CB&I employees across the country, except those in Illinois, and the benefits due to employees working for other Illinois-based companies will be at risk.
About Herren Law Office:
Herren Law Office is a law firm based in Houston, Texas representing long term disability claimants, social security and veterans' disability claims. The firm's founder William Herren regularly represents claimants in administrative hearings and in court cases. The firm has over 20 years of experience and has helped thousands of people with their claims. For additional information, please visit http://www.herrenlaw.com/.
Contact
William Herren, Herren Law
***@herrenlaw.com
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