Opinion ID: 2829974
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Mead and Finality Considerations

Text: A recent ERISA case from the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Mead v. Reliastar Life Insurance Co., 768 F.3d 102 (2d Cir. 2014), is useful in our consideration of the finality of the remand order now on appeal. Mead concerned an employee disability benefits claim in circumstances factually similar to those that we address now. There, the employer, Reliastar, provided a group insurance policy to its employees that included two kinds of benefits comparable to the STD and LTD benefits that Santander provided: own-occupation benefits for up to 24 months and any-occupation benefits thereafter. Id. at 104. Mead filed suit under ERISA after Reliastar denied her claim for 6 See also Bullard v. Blue Hills Bank, 135 S.Ct. 1686, 1691 (2015) (describing a final decision as “a ruling ‘by which a district court disassociates itself from a case’” (quoting Swint v. Chambers Cnty. Comm’n, 514 U.S. 35, 42, 115 S.Ct. 1203, 1208 (1995))). 12 disability benefits under its group policy. Id. at 104-05. The district court entertained Mead’s suit twice and both times remanded it for reconsideration, first because Reliastar’s reason for denial of own-occupation benefits did not identify the evidence that Reliastar credited and the evidence that it rejected in arriving at its decision, and second because the court believed that Reliastar “ignored” several physical requirements of Mead’s former position, refused to recognize the “ample” objective evidence supporting her subjective complaints of pain, and provided what the district court believed were “obviously false or misleading reasons” for discrediting the conclusions of its own neurologist. Id. at 105 (internal quotation marks omitted). After issuing its second remand order instructing Reliastar to “calculate and award” the own-occupation benefits and to determine whether Mead was entitled to any-occupation benefits, the district court directed its clerk to “close the case,” though it indicated that it would entertain a separate motion from Mead for prejudgment interest, attorneys’ fees, and costs. Id. at 106 (internal quotation marks omitted). Reliastar appealed from this second remand order to the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The court of appeals in its analysis of its jurisdiction observed that “remands to ERISA plan administrators generally are not ‘final’ because, in the ordinary case, they contemplate further proceedings by the plan administrator.” Id. at 108. The court explained that it nonetheless would “examine the content of the particular ERISA remand in order to determine its appealability,” citing Papotto with approval. Id. Further, “to preserve an ERISA plan administrator’s ability to obtain appellate review of a nonfinal remand order,” the court decided that it 13 generally would “interpret a district court’s remand order as [retaining] jurisdiction over the case such that, after a determination by the plan administrator on remand, either party may seek to reopen the district court proceeding and obtain a final judgment.” Id. at 108-09. The court of appeals concluded that the district court’s remand order was not final and appealable under either a conventional application of § 1291 or pursuant to the collateral order doctrine. Id. at 113.7 In determining that the remand order was not final and appealable, the court reasoned that by remanding the issue of Mead’s eligibility for any-occupation benefits without addressing the merits of that issue, the district court’s order did not “conclusively determine” Reliastar’s liability to Mead under her ERISA claim.8 Id. at 209. Importantly, the 7 As we noted in Papotto, when considering the collateral order doctrine, the Supreme Court in Will v. Hallock, 546 U.S. 345, 349, 126 S.Ct. 952, 957 (2006), applied a practical construction of rather than an exception to § 1291 to bring a collateral order appeal within that section. Papotto, 731 F.3d at 271 n.4. 8 Appellants posit that Mead rejected the approach that Papotto adopted when Papotto formulated the test for deciding whether remands to ERISA plan administrators are appealable. This view is an overstatement; Mead ultimately declined to decide whether to apply its own precedent governing the finality of orders remanding cases to administrative agencies, but its analysis mirrored our own in Papotto. See Mead, 768 F.3d at 108-09, 111-12, 114 (analyzing whether the remand order contemplated further proceedings by the plan administrator and whether the district court retained jurisdiction over the case, permitting later 14 court rejected Reliastar’s argument that the any-occupation and own-occupation portions of the order were separable, reasoning that “[w]hile it may be true that Mead’s eligibility for ‘any occupation’ benefits has no practical effect on whether she is entitled to receive ‘own occupation’ benefits, this has no impact on [the court’s] jurisdiction because a district court’s decision that does not dispose of all of the plaintiff’s claims for relief is not ‘final.’” Id. at 110 (citing Liberty Mut. Ins. Co. v. Wetzel, 424 U.S. 737, 744, 96 S.Ct. 1202, 1206 (1976)). Moreover, the court determined that even the own-occupation portion of the order was not final, as the amount of benefits due had not yet been determined, and calculation of that amount was more than a “ministerial task.” Id. at 110-11 & n.5.