Federal Court of Appeals: Long-Term Disability Insurer May Not Seize on Out-of-Context Quotes from Medical Records in the Face of Overwhelming Evidence of Disability

In an unpublished opinion dated June 20, 2019, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit unanimously agreed with a North Carolina district judge that Reliance Standard Life Insurance Company abused its discretion in terminating a man’s long-term disability benefits. Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, III authored the opinion. The case is Smith v. Reliance Standard Life …