I’ve had many clients shocked to learn that when you submit your application for Long Term Disability (LTD) benefits, what you are also doing is agreeing to be subject of the insurance company’s surveillance.
In many long term disability policies, there exists a clause that basically permits the insurance company to hire private investigators to conduct surveillance and report back to the insurance company on what they have seen. The insurance companies then scour the footage to either find evidence that an LTD claimant can work, or find evidence that the claimant has lied about their symptoms and limitations previously.
I’ve also had many clients shocked to hear my advice when they ask me what they should if they suspect the insurance company will (or is) conducting surveillance. My answer is: “Do nothing unusual.” Live your life. Do not confront the private eye if you see them, do not “act disabled,” as it will only come off fake, and do not stay home.
Don’t stay home, must be clarified a bit though. If your condition, physical or emotional, causes you to need to stay home, either due to mobility issues, fear, anxiety, fatigue, etc., then by all means do not force yourself outside. However, for everyone else, I’d say that the evidence I see on most surveillance tapes is evidence that helps THE CLAIMANT. My strongest arguments often come from evidence gathered by the insurance company.
In fact, an interesting opinion was just rendered in a case out of the 9th Circuit of the federal courts, underlying a lot of the same points that I am trying to make. The court found regarding the claimant that:
He was documented, on one day, sitting, standing and pacing for a longer period of time that he said he could…. [The insurance company] did not explain exactly what else [claimant] could have done other than either sit, stand, or pace while he waiting for his ride to come transport him home. Would it have made more of a difference if [claimant] had writhed in pain on the pavement in front of the camera rather than as soon as he returned home and climbed in his bed? See Collins v. Liberty Life Assur. Co. of Boston 2013 U.S.Dist.LEXIS 174237 (C.D.Cal. December 11, 2013).
This excerpt is remarkable in that it so simply grasps the frustration that so many people go through when worrying about surveillance. That surveillance, while accurate, only captures a fleeting moment of one’s life and doesn’t show the effects of whatever activity they were engaged or how debilitating it really was. The fact of the matter is that most people can temporarily sacrifice to make a situation work, the effects of that sacrifice manifests itself in more medication, rest (as the Judge mentioned above) and increased fatigue.
Peter Casciano
(240) 240-2872