Dimry v. Bert Bell/Pete Rozelle NFL Player Retirement Plan
- Jacquelyn Corley
- 3:19-cv-05360
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 5
In Dimry v. Bert Bell/Pete Rozelle NFL Player Retirement Plan, Judge Corley granted in part and denied in part Dimry’s discovery request in a disability-benefits case.
Charles Dimry and the Bert Bell/Pete Rozelle NFL Player Retirement Plan; the order required the Plan to produce limited compensation records concerning the three physicians who examined Dimry or provided reports about him.
What happened
Dimry v. Bert Bell/Pete Rozelle NFL Player Retirement Plan concerns Charles Dimry’s challenge to the Plan’s denial of total and permanent disability benefits. Dimry asked for additional documents about three physicians who examined him or reported on his disability.
Dimry sought unredacted physician contracts, payment information, and physician-meeting training materials. He argued that the information could show the physicians had financial conflicts that should make the court more skeptical of the Plan’s benefits decision. The Plan opposed further discovery.
Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley granted in part and denied in part the discovery request. She ordered the Plan to provide records showing each physician’s total compensation for the relevant year and the amount paid for Dimry’s examination or report, but denied the request in all other respects, including the request for training materials.
The detailed version
- Dimry v. Bert Bell/Pete Rozelle NFL Player Retirement Plan · No. 3:19-cv-05360
- Jacquelyn Corley
- Apr. 14, 2020
Background
Charles Dimry, a former National Football League player, challenges the Retirement Board’s denial of his claim for total and permanent disability benefits under the Plan and the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974. The matter before the court was a discovery dispute concerning Dimry’s request for documents from the Plan.
Dimry requested unredacted contracts between the NFL and three physicians—Steven Meier, James Chen, and Allen W. Jackson—and records showing payments made to each physician from any NFL plan during the year in which the physician examined Dimry or provided a report about him. He also requested training manuals, procedures, guidelines, meeting materials, slides, handouts, and memoranda from physician meetings applicable to those physicians from 2014 onward.
Legal framework and analysis
Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(b)(1), information is discoverable when it is relevant to a claim or defense. Dimry argued that the requested materials could show that the physicians had financial conflicts of interest, which could justify giving some skepticism to the Plan’s disability determination during review for abuse of discretion.
The court explained that the Plan is funded by NFL owners but is a multi-employer benefit trust fund maintained under the Taft–Hartley Act. Relying on Ninth Circuit precedent, the court concluded that the Plan does not have a structural conflict of interest as a matter of law because the participating employers fund the Plan, the trustees have no personal economic interest in benefit decisions, and the Board includes employer and employee representatives.
The court had previously ordered production of the physicians’ agreements based on Ninth Circuit precedent concerning the possible relevance of financial incentives among independent medical reviewers. The Plan produced the agreements with payment amounts redacted. The agreements showed that the physicians were paid a set amount for each examination regardless of the ultimate decision.
The court concluded that the physician-training materials were not relevant. The record did not suggest that those materials would reveal another type of conflict warranting skepticism in the abuse-of-discretion analysis, and allowing the request would make similar materials discoverable in every disability-benefits case.
The court reached a different conclusion about specific compensation information. Although the cited Ninth Circuit precedent did not explain fully why compensation and the number of reviews could support an inference of financial incentive, the court treated that precedent as binding. The court therefore required limited discovery concerning the compensation paid to each physician.
Disposition
The court granted in part and denied in part Dimry’s discovery request. Within two weeks, the Plan was ordered to provide records sufficient to show the total compensation paid to each physician during the year the physician examined Dimry or provided a report about him, along with the amount paid for that examination or report. In all other respects, the motion to compel was denied. The order disposed of Docket No. 31.
Read the full 5-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.