1 

14-3430-cv

Sobhani v. Reliance Standard Life Ins. Co. 

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS 

FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT 

SUMMARY ORDER 

Rulings by summary order do not have precedential effect. Citation to a summary order filed 

on or after January 1, 2007, is permitted and is governed by Federal Rule of Appellate 

Procedure 32.1 and this Court’s Local Rule 32.1.1. When citing a summary order in a 

document filed with this Court, a party must cite either the Federal Appendix or an 

electronic database (with the notation “summary order”). A party citing a summary order 

must serve a copy of it on any party not represented by counsel. 

At a stated term of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, held at 

the Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse, 40 Foley Square, in the City of New York, 

on the 18th day of December, two thousand fifteen. 

PRESENT: JOSÉ A. CABRANES, 

 BARRINGTON D. PARKER, 

 RAYMOND J. LOHIER, JR., 

 Circuit Judges.

 

JEFFREY SOBHANI, 

Plaintiff-Appellant, 14-3430-cv 

v. 

RELIANCE STANDARD LIFE INSURANCE CO.,

 Defendant-Appellee.*

 

FOR PLAINTIFF-APPELLANT: Phillip G. Steck, Cooper Erving & Savage 

LLP, Albany, NY. 

FOR DEFENDANT-APPELLEE: Joshua Bachrach, Wilson Elser Moskowitz 

Edelman & Dicker LLP, Philadelphia, PA. 

 

*

 The Clerk of Court is directed to amend the caption as set forth above. 
2 

 Appeal from a judgment of the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut 

(Michael P. Shea, Judge). 

UPON DUE CONSIDERATION WHEREOF, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED, 

ADJUDGED, AND DECREED that the judgment of the District Court be and hereby is 

AFFIRMED. 

Plaintiff-appellant Jeffrey Sobhani appeals the District Court’s August 15, 2014 order 

entering summary judgment in favor of defendant-appellee Reliance Standard Life Insurance Co. 

(“Reliance”) in his action for benefits under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 

(“ERISA”). We assume the parties’ familiarity with the underlying facts, procedural history, and 

specification of issues for review. 

“According to principles of trust law, a benefit determination is a fiduciary act, and courts 

must review de novo a denial of plan benefits unless the plan provides to the contrary.” McCauley v. 

First Unum Life Ins. Co., 551 F.3d 126, 132 (2d Cir. 2008). When, as in this case, “written plan 

documents confer upon a plan administrator the discretionary authority to determine eligibility,” de 

novo review does not apply; rather, “we will not disturb the administrator’s ultimate conclusion unless 

it is arbitrary and capricious.” Hobson v. Metro. Life Ins. Co., 574 F.3d 75, 82 (2d Cir. 2009) (internal 

quotation marks omitted). “[A] plan under which an administrator both evaluates and pays benefits 

claims creates . . . [a] conflict of interest that courts must take into account and weigh as a factor in 

determining whether there was an abuse of discretion, but does not make de novo review 

appropriate.” McCauley, 551 F.3d at 133. Applying these principles to Sobhani’s claims of error, we 

affirm. 

Sobhani’s first argument focuses not on the administrative denial of his claim for disability 

benefits but on the record that was before the District Court. Sobhani concedes that, in rendering 

its decision, the District Court drew from and relied on a 508-page file containing documents 

pertaining to Sobhani’s claim. Sobhani Rep. Br. 1-2; App. 20. The Court described this file as “[t]he 

Administrative Record,” and by all appearances that is what it is. Id. But according to Sobhani, 

“there is no evidence that this is the official and complete administrative record of this case”; the 

record does not establish when the file was submitted to the District Court, or by whom, and it 

might be incomplete or inaccurate. Sobhani Rep. Br. 1-2. 

We decline to address this argument because Sobhani failed to raise it before the District 

Court. Millea v. Metro-North R.R. Co., 658 F.3d 154, 163 (2d Cir. 2011) (“Arguments raised for the 

first time on appeal are deemed waived.”). In the proceeding below, the District Court (as well as 

both parties) treated this file as if it were the bona fide administrative record. Any concern that it is 

not the genuine article should have been raised then, not for the first time on appeal. 

Sobhani’s chief contention is that Reliance’s denial of his claim for disability benefits was 

arbitrary and capricious. We disagree. The operative employee benefit plan (“the Plan”) promises 
3 

to “pay a Monthly Benefit if an Insured: (1) is Totally Disabled as the result of a Sickness or Injury 

covered by this Policy; (2) is under the regular care of a Physician; (3) has completed the Elimination 

Period; and (4) submits satisfactory proof of Total Disability to us.” Supp. App. 30. As relevant 

here, an insured is “Totally Disabled” if, as a result of injury or sickness, he cannot perform the 

material duties of his “Regular Occupation” during the so-called elimination period “and for the first 

24 months for which a Monthly Benefit is payable.” Id. at 20. An insured who is “Partially 

Disabled” — meaning that, as a result of injury or sickness, he can perform the material duties of his 

regular occupation on a part-time basis or some of those material duties on a full-time basis — is 

considered “Totally Disabled,” except during the elimination period. Id. But an insured has a 

“Residual Disability” if he is “Partially Disabled” during the elimination period, and “Residual 

Disability will be considered Total Disability.” Id. 

The “Elimination Period” begins on the first day of “Total Disability” and runs for 180 days; 

with one exception not at issue here, no benefit is payable if the insured does not remain “Totally 

Disabled” throughout that time. Id. at 17, 19. For purposes of determining whether an insured can 

work “full-time” in his “Regular Occupation,” the Plan defines “full-time” as a thirty-hour 

workweek and looks to the insured’s “Regular Occupation” as it is “normally performed in the 

national economy,” not as it is performed for a particular employer. Id. at 19, 20. 

Reliance did not act arbitrarily and capriciously when it determined that Sobhani was not 

entitled to disability benefits under these provisions. It concluded that Sobhani’s claim failed on two 

independent grounds: first, that his “medical records [did] not support a Total or Partial Disability”; 

and second, that he did not meet “the Total or Partial Disability requirements throughout the entire 

180-day Elimination Period.” Id. at 60. Reliance’s determination that Sobhani failed to satisfy the 

requirements of the elimination period, a condition of obtaining benefits, was plainly reasonable. 

To secure a favorable benefits determination, Sobhani was required to show that he 

“completed the Elimination Period,” i.e., that as a result of injury or sickness, he was unable to 

perform the material duties of his regular occupation on a full-time basis for a continuous period of 

180 days running from the first day of “total disability.” In his administrative proceeding, Sobhani 

argued that he became “totally disabled” on July 2, 2010. Id. at 62. Accordingly, Sobhani could have 

been eligible for benefits only if at that time and for the next 180 days, he was unable to perform the 

material duties of his regular occupation on a full-time basis. But Sobhani continued to work fulltime — that is, to work thirty-hour weeks — through August 20, 2010. Indeed, in the eight weeks 

following the asserted onset of disability, he worked for 32, 23, 34, 33, 37, 34.5, 39.5, and 35 hours, 

id. at 255-262, and on July 2, 2010, he told his primary-care physician that he was capable of working 

between 30 and 32 hours weekly, id. at 209. Because Sobhani was able to (and did) work full-time 

during this period, he could have qualified as “totally disabled” only if, during this time, he was 

incapable of performing at least some of his material duties as an aircraft engineer. See id. at 20 (an 

insured qualifies as “Partially Disabled” (and thus “Totally Disabled” within the meaning of the 

Plan) if “an Insured is capable of performing the material duties of his/her Regular Occupation on a 
4 

part-time basis or some of the material duties on a full-time basis” (emphasis added)). But nothing 

in the record suggests that was the case.1

That Reliance was operating under a conflict of interest because it both evaluates and pays 

claims does nothing to unsettle this conclusion. Such a conflict is to be “weighed as a factor in 

determining whether there is an abuse of discretion,” Metro. Life Ins. Co. v. Glenn, 554 U.S. 105, 115 

(2008) (internal quotation marks omitted), but we have “declined to assign any weight to a conflict 

of interest in the absence of any evidence that the conflict actually affected the administrator’s 

decision,” Roganti v. Metro. Life Ins. Co., 786 F.3d 201, 218 (2d Cir. 2015) (internal quotation marks 

omitted). Sobhani points out that an “irrational decision or a one-sided decisionmaking process” 

can indicate that a conflict in fact influenced the administrator. Id.; see Sobhani Br. 21. As explained 

above, however, Reliance’s determination that Sobhani did not satisfy the elimination period was 

reasonable; and as the District Court observed, Reliance explained its determination in “Appeal 

Letters [that] reflect a thorough review of the evidence in the Administrative Record.” App. 27. 

Accordingly, we have no reason to suppose that Reliance’s conflict of interest infected its decision, 

and no basis on which to disturb its conclusion that Sobhani is not entitled to disability benefits. 

CONCLUSION 

We have reviewed all of Sobhani’s arguments on appeal and find them to be without merit. 

We thus AFFIRM the August 15, 2014 judgment of the District Court. 

 FOR THE COURT: 

 Catherine O’Hagan Wolfe, Clerk 

 

1

 Sobhani also argues that, before concluding that his “medical records [did] not support a Total 

or Partial Disability,” Supp. App. 60, Reliance was obliged to determine whether any American 

employer “would hire an engineer who [cannot work] 40 hours per week,” Sobhani Br. 17. We 

understand Sobhani to argue that the ability to work forty hours a week is a material duty of an 

aircraft engineer, and therefore — notwithstanding the Plan’s explicit language stating that an 

insured is not “disabled” if he can perform all the material duties of his occupation and work thirty 

hours a week — he qualifies as “disabled” if he cannot work forty hours a week, even if he can 

perform all of his (other) material duties. Having reviewed the record and Reliance’s sensible 

interpretation of the Plan as applied to Sobhani’s circumstances, we disagree. See McCauley, 551 F.3d 

at 132-33 (“Where both the plan administrator and a spurned claimant offer rational, though 

conflicting, interpretations of plan provisions, the administrator’s interpretation must be allowed to 

control.” (internal quotation marks omitted)).