June Saffle v. Sierra Pacific Power Company Bargaining Unit Long Term Disability Income Plan

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• holding that when an administrator has “applied an incorrect standard to its benefits determination,” the court should “remand to the administrator for it to make that decision under the plan, properly construed.”
• noting that the plaintiff never applied for benefits under a “total disability” standard when rejecting paying ongoing benefits after the standard switched
• holding it was error for the district court to order payments beyond the initial 24-month disability period where the standard for determining disability changed after the 24-month mark
• stating that a plan administrator “abuses its discretion if it construes provisions of the plan in a way that ‘conflicts with the plain language of the plan’ ” (citations omitted)
• holding that where, as here, the Plan grants discretion to the administrator and the administrator “has not yet had the opportunity of applying the Plan, properly construed, ... [i]t should be up to the administrator, not the courts, to make that call in the first instance”
• remanding to the plan administrator for application of correct standard for determining whether claimant had \total disability\ for purposes of disability benefits

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).