It’s really important if your long-term disability claim, and in particular your ERISA long-term disability claim, has been denied that you hire an experienced attorney and not somebody who is unfamiliar with ERISA. ERISA is an incredibly complex statute. It’s incredibly voluminous. Many attorneys have no experience dealing with it or simply dabble in it. And one of the things we see is that when attorneys dabble in these claims but don’t really have a deep understanding the statute, a lot of experience litigating these cases, outcomes for clients are not as good. While you can’t guarantee the outcome in any case, certainly having somebody who knows the statute forward and backward has a long history of litigating the cases and litigating them to judgment successfully puts you in a much better position to have a more satisfactory outcome on your case.
ERISA is a complicated statute. Many judges have a passing familiarity with ERISA. Some have more experience with ERISA, but oftentimes it’s the defense attorney that crafts a narrative on the case. And so what, my experience, many judges are accustomed to hearing the defense bars spin on what ERISA means, what the law means, and how these cases should be decided, how discovery should be handled, and how the outcome should be reached. When you have an experienced plaintiff-oriented ERISA attorney, you have the opportunity to recraft that narrative in your favor. The law is not so one-sided as the defense bar likes to portray it. In fact, ERISA is a remedial statute. It was passed to protect your benefits, and it should be easier, not harder, to get paid when your claim’s been denied. But unfortunately, over the last 40-plus years, the law has evolved in a different way. And so it’s important to have an experienced ERISA attorney working for you who has deep knowledge of the statute and can put you in the best position to prevail on your case.
At the Garner Firm, we have a lot of experience litigating a risk of benefit claims. I began my career as a defense attorney, representing insurers and other plan fiduciaries in a risk litigation, took a number of cases to judgment. I then worked as a plan administrator myself for several years in addition to performing various legal functions with a benefit plan. That experience and now several years of running a plaintiff-oriented risk firm is provided in a wealth of experience. We speak at conferences regularly. Both myself and the other attorneys at the firm are published regularly in ERISA treatises on the topic and are generally thought of as being highly knowledgeable in the field. Most notably, we take cases to judgment. We have taken numerous cases to judgment on behalf of our clients. We don’t settle every case. And when we do take cases to judgment, we have achieved remarkable outcomes for our clients, not in every case, but in many cases.