Objections raised by Standard need to be denied for the principle of justice.

Ms. Kathleen M. Hackett brought suit in this Court against Standard Insurance Company alleging that Standard has wrongfully denied her long term disability benefits claim. Both the parties moved for the summary judgment. And District Court granted summary judgment on August 15, 2007. Court held that although Standard operated under a conflict of interest, it caused a serious breach of fiduciary duty. But Hackett failed to prove any potential finding which shows conflict of interest.

In appeal against the order of the District Court, Eighth circuit Court of appeal reversed and remanded the matter for its reconsideration of the conflict of interest in the light of Glenn V Metropolitan Life Insurance Company.  

In remand, Hackett’s disability attorney served a second set of interrogatories to Standard. Standard raised objections on those interrogatories and pointed out that discovery was already closed and remand was only allowed to consider the administrative records in light of Glenn.

The objections raised by Standard were as under.

Posture of the case ignored while ordering discovery

Eighth Circuit Court did not mentioned anywhere in its order to allow additional discovery. Therefore, as per the Standard, Magistrate Judge did error while allowing further discovery order. But Standard objections failed to acknowledge the issuance of order setting dead line issued on September 21, 2009. Eighth Circuit Court remanded the case which clearly shows that additional discovery should be allowed. Appeal Court ruled on the right of Hackett to proceed with discovery and it only remains for the Court to determine. Therefore objection raised by Standard was denied.

Requested discovery is cumulative and irrelevant to the present conflict.

Hackett attempted to make inquiry of Standard’s efforts to assure accurate claims assessment was consistent with the clear language of Glenn. Prior to Glenn, Hackett’s discovery was limited to the business relationship between Standard and Dr. Zivin and Dr. Dickerman. But post Glenn, main question was that whether the Court should allow discovery to extend into the other related areas not requested by Hackett in her interrogatories. After consideration of cited authorities and logic expressed by both side of the discovery, the Court held that the more appropriate step was to allow limited discovery. Court should allow Hackett to make inquiry in to any incentives paid by Standard for denial of claims. Same thing remain true with respect to relationship between Standard and outside medical advisor, who might received the incentives to inappropriately denial of claims.

Therefore, Court held that Hackett must be allowed to make inquiry into the conflict of interest analysis. And further based upon the reason given above, Standard’s objection was denied. And limited discovery was allowed.

The burden of the requested discovery outweighs the potential benefits.

The last objection raised by Standard was that the cost of production of requested discovery would be outweighs the benefits which Hackett would be get I presenting the case. Standard did not raise this point before Magistrate Judge and before entry of order. When the discovery requested was relevant to the dispute, expensiveness and burdensome of production of such discovery would not be a proper reason to deny the discovery. The next objection was related to Hackett’s interrogatories 9 to 12. This discovery revealed that Dr. Zivin reviewed 398 files for the consideration of $115,228 during 2003 to 2005. It also came to know that Standard paid $289.94 to Dr. zivin and $297.58 to Dr. Dickerman for each review done by them.  Therefore above requested matter was relevant to the matter in dispute. Above information help to determine how much percentage of time Dr. Zivin and Dr. Dickerman denied the claims. And it would help to prove that Standard was engaged in a history of biased claims administration with the help of both physicians. Without this information, Hackett, unable to prove biased history of Standard. Therefore Hackett was entitled to above discovery to shore up the evidence required to prove his case. For this reason Standard’s objection to interrogatories 9-12 was denied.

Finally Hackett succeeded to put his discovery although Standard raised objections to it. Hackett’s disability attorney argued for the each and every objection and pursues the Court to disallow it.