Foster v. Sedgwick Claims Mgmt. Servs., Inc.

• Citation: 159 F.Supp.3d 11
• Decision Date: 01 December 2015
• Docket Number: Civil Action No. 14–1241 (JEB)
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Columbia
• Parties: Kelly Foster, Plaintiff, v. Sedgwick Claims Management Services, Inc., et al., Defendants.

159 F.Supp.3d 11

Kelly Foster, Plaintiff,

v.Sedgwick Claims Management Services, Inc., et al., Defendants.

Civil Action No. 14–1241 (JEB)

United States District Court, District of Columbia.

Signed December 1, 2015

Denise Marie Clark, Clark Law Group, PLLC, Washington, DC, Scott Bertram Elkind, Elkind & Shea, Silver Spring, MD, for Plaintiff.

James Taylor Heidelbach, Gregory L. Arbogast, Gebhardt & Smith LLP, Baltimore, MD, for Defendants.

MEMORANDUM OPINION

JAMES E. BOASBERG, United States District Judge

On August 28, 2015, this Court issued a Memorandum Opinion and separate Order granting summary judgment in favor of Defendants Sedgwick Claims Management Services, Inc., and Sun Trust Bank's Short-Term and Long-Term Disability Plans. See ECF Nos. 28-29. Plaintiff Kelly Foster now moves under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 59(e) to alter or amend that judgment and under Rule 15(a) to amend her Complaint. As the arguments and legal theories she offers are based neither on new or previously unavailable evidence nor on any intervening change in the law, the Court will deny the Motion.

I. Background

The background of this case is set forth in greater detail in the Court's Opinion, see Foster v. Sedgwick Claims Mgmt. Servs., Inc. , 125 F.Supp.3d 200, 2015 WL 5118360 (D.D.C. Aug. 28, 2015), but a truncated summary of the dispute will suffice here. Plaintiff, a former employee of Sun Trust Bank, asserts that she suffers from a host of physical conditions—including dry eyes, anxiety, fatigue, and fibromyalgia —that rendered her “totally disabled” and unable to work. Id. at 202, 2015 WL 5118360, at *1. She applied for but was denied benefits under the Bank's Short-Term Disability (STD) Plan, as well as its Long-Term Disability (LTD) Plan—the latter of which requires sustained eligibility for the former, or for Workers' Compensation, as a precondition of receiving benefits. Id. at 203, 2015 WL 5118360, at *2. After Sedgwick, the claims administrator for both plans, upheld these denials, Foster filed the present lawsuit to clarify and enforce her rights under the plans, as permitted by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). Id. ; see also 29 U.S.C. § 1132(a) ; Compl., ¶¶ 1-4.

Defendants thereafter moved for summary judgment, contending, first, that the STD Plan was not covered by ERISA, and, second, that Foster was not eligible for benefits under the LTD Plan. See ECF No. 22 (Def. MSJ) at 1-2. Concurring with both contentions, the Court granted the Motion.

In its Opinion, the Court began by noting that Foster had unambiguously conceded that the STD Plan is not governed by ERISA, and that such concession seemed wise given that the Plan resembled a payroll-practices plan rather than an employee-benefit plan that would be covered by the statute. See Foster , 125 F.Supp.3d at 204, 2015 WL 5118360, at *3. Her remedy, therefore, would lie, if at all, in state contract law. Id.

The Court next turned to the LTD Plan, which all parties agreed was governed by ERISA. Id. at 206, 2015 WL 5118360, at *4. As a threshold matter, Plaintiff had argued that the Court should review her denial of benefits de novo , but Sedgwick had insisted that a more deferential standard of review was required. Id. at 206–07, 2015 WL 5118360, at *4–5. The Court concluded that when a benefits plan such as this one vests its administrator with the authority to assess a claimant's eligibility for benefits, such authority is discretionary and therefore may only be reviewed for abuse of discretion. Id. The Court thus employed that standard. Id. at 207–09, 2015 WL 5118360, at *5–7.

In considering the merits, the Court first noted that the LTD Plan requires that claimants be disabled for a 180-day “waiting period,” during which they (1) may not return to work for more than 30 days and (2) must maintain eligibility for STD benefits or Workers' Compensation. See ECF No. 22, Exh. 3 (LTD Plan) at 4-5. Sedgwick informed Foster that it denied her request for LTD benefits because she had failed to satisfy either of the two waiting-period requirements. See ECF No. 22, Exh. 17 (LTD Denial Letter). Relying on the evidence in the record, the Court concluded that Sedgwick did not abuse its discretion in deciding that Foster had not proven that she was entitled to STD benefits throughout the waiting period. See Foster , 125 F.Supp.3d at 208–09, 2015 WL 5118360, at *6–7. The Court further concluded, inter alia , that Foster had not presented evidence that a conflict of interest altered or in any way motivated Sedgwick's eligibility determination in her case. Id. at 210, 2015 WL 5118360, at *8.

On September 25, 2015, Plaintiff timely filed the instant Motion for Reconsideration and for Leave to File an Amended Complaint. See ECF No. 30.

II. Legal Standard

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 59(e) permits the filing of a motion to alter or amend a judgment when such motion is filed within 28 days after the judgment's entry. The Court must apply a “stringent” standard when evaluating Rule 59(e) motions. See Ciralsky v. CIA , 355 F.3d 661, 673 (D.C.Cir.2004). “A Rule 59(e) motion is discretionary and need not be granted unless the district court finds that there is an intervening change of controlling law, the availability of new evidence, or the need to correct a clear error or prevent manifest injustice.” Firestone v. Firestone , 76 F.3d 1205, 1208 (D.C.Cir.1996) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted); see also 11 C. Wright & A. Miller, Fed. Prac. & Proc. Civ. § 2810.1 at 158-62 (3d ed. 2012) (stating that the “four basic grounds” for Rule 59(e) motion are “manifest errors of law or fact,” “newly discovered or previously unavailable evidence,” “prevent[ion of] manifest injustice,” and “intervening change in controlling law”). Critically, Rule 59(e) “is not a vehicle to present a new legal theory that was available prior to judgment.” Patton Boggs LLP v. Chevron Corp. , 683 F.3d 397, 403 (D.C.Cir.2012).

III. Analysis

In her Motion for Reconsideration, Foster advances two new theories about the STD Plan: Abjuring her prior concession that the Plan was not covered by ERISA, she now contends that it is covered by the statute. Alternatively, she asserts that the STD Plan is so “related” to the ERISA-covered LTD Plan that ERISA preempts any state-law remedies; as a result, she believes, her claim lies only under ERISA. She also repeats two previously argued theories about the LTD Plan—namely, that the Court should have reviewed Sedgwick's decision to deny her LTD benefits under a de novo standard, and that Sedgwick improperly labored under a conflict of interest as the claims administrator for both Plans. Last, Plaintiff asks that the Court permit her to amend her Complaint to include a claim that Defendants interfered with her rights under these Plans, in violation of ERISA § 510. See 29 U.S.C. § 1140. The Court will address each of these issues in turn.

A. STD Plan

Plaintiff devotes the majority of her Motion to the STD Plan. Her two contentions about that Plan, while presented as alternatives, both assert that Sedgwick's denial of her claim for STD benefits should have been evaluated under ERISA. Foster's first argument, wholly absent from her summary-judgment briefing, is that although the STD Plan looks like a payroll-practices plan not governed by ERISA, it actually is an ERISA plan. See Mot. at 6. As a result, she insists, the Court should have considered whether the denial of STD benefits violated ERISA. Her second argument, in the alternative, is that the STD Plan “relates to” the ERISA-governed LTD Plan in such a way as to preempt any state-law relief.

To begin, the Court must underscore, as do Defendants, that Plaintiff's position is directly at odds with her prior express and unequivocal concession that the STD Plan is not governed by ERISA. See MSJ Opp. at 1 (“Defendants assert and Plaintiff agrees that the Short-Term Disability Plan (“STD”) is not plan [sic ] covered under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act.”) (emphasis added). Plaintiff has offered no reason why she could not have raised her new arguments in her summary-judgment submissions, nor has she explained in her current Motion why she opted to take her earlier position that the Plan is not covered by ERISA and why she subsequently changed her mind. This omission is problematic for her, as it is well established that Rule 59(e) motions “may not be used to relitigate old matters, or to raise arguments or present evidence that could have been raised prior to the entry of judgment.” Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker , 554 U.S. 471, 485 n. 5, 128 S.Ct. 2605, 171 L.Ed.2d 570 (2008) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted); see also Patton Boggs LLP v. Chevron Corp. , 683 F.3d 397, 403 (D.C.Cir.2012) ( “Rule 59(e) is not a vehicle to present a new legal theory that was available prior to judgment.”). The Court can ascertain no reason why either of Plaintiff's current positions was unavailable to her before judgment, as neither a change in the law nor the discovery of new evidence appears to have motivated her about-face. As such, her new theories that the STD Plan is an ERISA plan or is “related” to such a plan do not provide a basis for vacating the Court's judgment.

The Court's analysis could end there. Yet even if the Court were inclined to consider a contradictory litigation position in a Rule 59(e) motion, it would not be persuaded by Plaintiff's new contentions. Her first argument is doomed by her failure to identify any authority suggesting that if a benefits plan walks like a payroll practice and talks like a payroll practice, it nevertheless is not such a practice. The determination of whether a plan is an ERISA plan, rather than a payroll-practice plan is, obviously, a fact-intensive, multi-factored inquiry. See Kolkowski v. Goodrich Corp. , 448 F.3d 843, 847 (6th Cir.2006) (“Determining the existence of an ERISA plan is a question of fact to be answered in light of all the surrounding...