Exploring Strategies for Pursuing Long COVID-19 LTD Claims

This program is presented by Barbara B. Comerford, attorney and Lawline Faculty member with more than 30 years experience in ERISA and Disability Income law. Ms. Comerford will discuss the ever-evolving and most recent medical research on Long COVID-19 (LC-19). She will address how LC-19 can present in individuals who had been diagnosed with COVID-19 but months later continue to suffer debilitating symptoms and limitations such that they cannot return to work. She will also discuss the myriad and serious medical disorders now seen in LC-19 patients. And since LC-19 cases have not (as of this writing) surfaced in the ERISA LTD case law, Ms. Comerford will provide strategies to analogize LC-19 cases to other disability claims that prevent claimants, with similar symptoms and limitations, from working. Moreover, she will provide a case review of ERISA LTD cases that are most suitable for comparison to LC-19 disability claims. 

This program will benefit attorneys confronting Long COVID-19 cases and allow them to familiarize themselves with the most recent medical research about common and uncommon complaints and limitations experienced by Long COVID-19 patients, and disabling symptoms that can arise in these cases. Moreover, it will benefit attorneys by providing recommendations for the medical documentation necessary to support these disability claims. And it will also benefit attorneys who are unfamiliar with legal strategies to employ to support Long COVID-19 disability claims.

Learning Objectives:  

1. Review basics of ERISA LTD and disability income claims

2. Provide the most recent medical research about Long COVID-19 symptoms and limitations, as well as, a discussion of medical disorders previously not identified as part of LC-19 that are now seen in some members of that population

3. Develop the LC-19 case in view of the ever changing medical research findings

4. Review ERISA LTD cases that are most analogous to Long COVID-19 disability claims

5. Recommendations for objective testing in the context of the most analogous disability claims with LC-19