Opinion ID: 182135
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Group Life and Accidental Death and Dismemberment Insurance Policy

Text: Fier also challenges the district court's conclusion that his AD & D policy requires an insured to have his hands or feet at least partially cut off. See Fier, 2009 WL 3644187, at . The relevant portion of the policy provides for a lump sum payment in the event an insured loses both hands or both feet. The policy defines loss as follows: For hands or feet, loss means dismemberment by severance at or above the wrist or ankle joint. Id. at . Fier argues that although his hands and feet remain physically attached to his body, he has lost them from a functional standpoint due to the severance of his spinal cord. This circuit has not yet construed the terms dismemberment by severance in an ERISA plan. We now interpret those terms to require physical removal of the limbs. In Cunninghame v. Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States, 652 F.2d 306, 307 (2d Cir.1981) (per curiam), the plaintiff's AD & D policy defined loss of hands or feet as dismemberment by severance at or above wrist or ankle joints respectively. As in Fier's case, the plaintiff in Cunninghame had suffered a severed spinal cord resulting in paralysis. Id. The plaintiff urged the court to award benefits because he had lost the use of his legs from a functional standpoint. Id. The Second Circuit concluded the policy's definition of loss was unambiguous and construed the terms dismemberment by severance as follows: The word dismemberment itself implies actual separation; the noun derives from the transitive verb dismember, defined as meaning to cut or tear off or disjoin the limbs, members, or part of or to tear into pieces: take apart roughly or divide (a whole) into sections or separate units or, obsoletely, to lop or sever. Dismemberment as a noun, therefore, refers to the act of dismembering or the state of being dismembered: division into separate parts or units. Furthermore, severance is defined as the act or process of severing, and derives from sever, meaning to put asunder, to join or disunite from one another, to keep separate or apart, to divide or break up into parts, to cut in two: sunder, cleave[.] Thus, dismemberment by severance has to mean in our view some actual, physical separation; the use of two words essentially expressing the same idea strikes us as unambiguous draftsmanship by an abundantly cautious lawyer. And when added to this phrase is the clause at or above wrist or ankle joints, it would seem plain that the policy had the limited scope which we ascribe to it. Id. at 309 (internal citations to dictionary omitted). We agree with and adopt this reasoning. Reading the AD & D policy's language in its ordinary and popular sense, Evans, 916 F.2d at 1441, the terms dismemberment by severance are unambiguous and require actual, physical separation. See Cunninghame, 652 F.2d at 309. Because Fier did not suffer the physical detachment of his limbs, Unum does not owe him benefits under the AD & D policy. AFFIRMED.