ERISA – Disability Benefits 

Posted: 1:00 am Mon, October 5, 2009
By admin
Tags: ERISA

Where an employer’s long-term disability insurer approved a cardiologist’s claim; the cardiologist had worked under a contract paying him $500,000 per year as base compensation in exchange for a designated number of on-call days, and had been paid an additional amount for any additional days the cardiologist was on call; and the disability plan did not include “overtime pay” as part of the calculation of “basic monthly earnings”; the District Court concludes that the insurer reasonably concluded that the cardiologist’s additional-call time fell within the commonly understood definition of overtime pay, and the insurer’s determination that the additional-call time should be omitted from “basic monthly earnings” was consistent with the clear language of the plan.