Seals v. Liberty Life Assurance Company of Boston

Filing 23

ORDER Overruling 21 Objections, Adopting 20 Report and Recommendation, Granting Defendant's 12 Motion to Affirm, Denying Plaintiff's 13 Motion to Reverse, Affirming Decision of the Plan Administrator, and Dismissing 1 Complaint with Prejudice. Signed by District Judge Thomas L. Ludington. (Sian, M)

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
EASTERN DISTRICT OF MICHIGAN
NORTHERN DIVISION
KRIS SEALS,
Plaintiff,
v.

Case No. 14-cv-13423
Honorable Thomas L. Ludington

LIBERTY LIFE ASSURANCE COMPANY OF
BOSTON,
Defendant.
_______________________________________/
ORDER OVERRULING OBJECTIONS, ADOPTING REPORT AND
RECOMMENDATION, GRANTING DEFENDANT’S MOTION TO AFFIRM,
DENYING PLAINTIFF’S MOTION TO REVERSE, AFFIRMING DECISION OF THE
PLAN ADMINISTRATOR, AND DISMISSING COMPLAINT WITH PREJUDICE
Plaintiff Kris Seals appealed the decision of Liberty Life Assurance Company of
Boston’s (“Liberty” or “Plan”) Plan Administrator that he was not disabled under the terms of a
long term disability plan set up by Seals’s employer and in which he participated. Pl.’s Compl.,
ECF No. 1. Seals and Liberty filed cross motions seeking to overturn and affirm, respectively,
the decision of the Plan Administrator. See Def.’s Mot. Affirm, ECF No. 12; Pl.’s Mot. Overturn,
ECF No. 13. Those motions were referred to Magistrate Judge Patricia T. Morris for report and
recommendation. Judge Morris issued a Report on April 29, 2015 recommending that the Plan’s
motion be granted and Seals’s motion denied because Seals is not disabled under the terms of the
Long Term Disability Plan. See Rep. & Rec., ECF No. 20. Seals timely objected to the Report
and argued that Judge Morris erred by not properly weighing the evidence in the record, which
supports a finding of disability. Those objections are now under consideration. Since they are
without merit, they will be denied and the Report will be adopted in full.

I.
Judge Morris prepared a comprehensive and thorough report in this case spanning over
sixty pages. As part of that Report she included a recitation of relevant facts that covered twentyfive pages. Neither party objects to Judge Morris’s communication of the facts and no recitation
of facts would be useful here in light of their thorough presentation in the Report. The facts as
conveyed in the Report have been reviewed de novo and are adopted in their entirety here as the
Court’s findings of fact.
II.
A.
Pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 72, a party may object to and seek review of
a Magistrate Judge’s report and recommendation. See FED. R. CIV. P. 72(b)(2). If objections are
made, “[t]he district judge must determine de novo any part of the magistrate judge’s disposition
that has been properly objected to.” FED. R. CIV. P. 72(b)(3). Objections must be stated with
specificity. Thomas v. Arn, 474 U.S. 140, 151 (1985) (citation omitted).
De novo review requires at least a review of the evidence before the Magistrate Judge;
the Court may not act solely on the basis of a Magistrate Judge’s report and recommendation.
See Hill v. Duriron Co., 656 F.2d 1208, 1215 (6th Cir. 1981). After reviewing the evidence, the
Court is free to accept, reject, or modify the findings or recommendations of the Magistrate
Judge. See Lardie v. Birkett, 221 F. Supp. 2d 806, 807 (E.D. Mich. 2002). If the Court accepts a
report and recommendation, the Court is not required to state with specificity what it reviewed; it
is sufficient for the Court to state that it engaged in a de novo review of the record.
B.

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Both parties agree that the proper standard of review to be employed by the Court is the
de novo standard. The de novo standard is appropriate “unless the benefit plan gives the plan
administrator discretionary authority to determine eligibility for benefits or to construe the terms
of the plan.” Wilkins v. Baptist Healthcare Sys., Inc., 150 F.3d 609, 613 (6th Cir. 1998). Neither
party claims that the plan administrator has such authority here. Thus, the Court’s role “is to
determine whether the administrator or fiduciary made a correct decision[.]” Perry v. Simplicity
Eng’g, 900 F.2d 963, 966 (6th Cir. 1990).
III.
Seals makes two objections to Judge Morris’s Report. First, he argues that the Report
does not properly weigh the medical evidence of his disability and arrives at a conclusion
contrary to the evidence in the record in determining that he is not disabled under the terms of
the Plan. Second, Seals argues that while Judge Morris was under no obligation to give greater
weight to his treating physicians’ opinions, under the circumstances of his illness and its need for
continued observation, his treating physicians’ opinions should have been given greater weight.
The Plan filed a response contesting both objections.
A.
Seals first objection claims that the Report improperly weighs the conflicting evidence of
disability in the record. Ostensibly, Seals takes issue with Judge Morris’s construction of the
term “proof” in the plan’s language. Judge Morris construed proof to require some measure of
objective proof produced by the claimant to show that he is disabled. Seals argued, and continues
to argue in his objections, that the language of the plan does not require objective evidence. To
Seals, the search by the Report for objective evidence of disability imposed a “heightened

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standard [of demonstrating disability] . . . [that] is impossible to be satisfied with the type of
psychiatric injuries suffered by” him. Pl.’s Objs. 4, ECF No. 21.
But Seals must be held, in the plan’s requirement for “proof,” to a standard that requires
something more than his bare assertion that he is disabled. In fact, Seals concedes as much in his
objections when he states that “[p]sychological diagnosis [sic] are obtained through ongoing
observations and treating the patient for an extended period of time.” Id. at 4. This statement by
Seals admits that something more than his own subjective belief of disability must be offered to
meet his burden under the plan. And the Report concludes that Seals provides such evidence but
“stress[es] that this conclusion says nothing of the evidence’s ultimate persuasiveness.” Rep. &
Rec. 34, ECF No. 20.
Thus, Seals’s objection is ultimately that the Report improperly weighed the evidence in
the record and erroneously concluded that he was disabled. Upon de novo review, Judge Morris
did not err. The facts in the record support the conclusion that Seals is not disabled. First, two of
Seals’s treating physicians had no particular specialty in mental health treatment. Second, Dr.
Nahata, one of Seals’s treating physicians, changed his disability recommendation over the
course of a few months from stating that Seals could return to work to stating that he was
disabled. Dr. Nahata did not substantiate why his opinion concerning Seals’s disability changed.
Judge Morris rightly found, and the Court adopts her conclusion, that Dr. Nahata’s opinion on
disability loses credibility for that reason. Seals does not explain this discrepancy in his
objections.
Third, Seals’s other treating physician, Dr. Pruitt, offered an opinion that Seals was
disabled based on his mental condition, but offers no information or opinion substantiating those
conclusions. Dr. Pruitt, as noted above, does not have any special psychological or psychiatric

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knowledge enabling her to opine convincingly on Seals’s mental condition. Rather, she referred
Seals to a psychiatrist for treatment. Dr. Pruitt’s complete reliance on the opinions of Seals’s
other doctors in reaching her conclusions makes them less credible. Her conclusions are also
contradicted by her encouragement to Seals that starting a new career will help with his
psychological condition.
Finally, the one treating psychiatrist Seals did visit, to whom he was referred by Dr.
Pruitt, reached no firm conclusion concerning Seals’s disability. Dr. Ingram, the psychologist,
merely stated equivocally that it was unknown whether Seals could or could not return to work
but that the decision was ultimately up to Seals. This is not a conclusion of complete disability.
The evidence in the record that he is not disabled outweighs the evidence Seals provided that he
is. For example, Dr. Shafer, to whom Seals was referred by his treating physician Dr. Nahatu,
performed a comprehensive neuropsychological test of Seals. Dr. Shafer concluded that Seals
functioned at average or above average levels and was able to return to work. Seals’s objection
that the evidence in the record was not properly weighed by the Report is without merit.
B.
Seals’s second objection is, fundamentally, derivative of his overall position that Judge
Morris erred in concluding that the Plan Administrator correctly found that he is not disabled. In
his second objection, Seals claims that Judge Morris did not give proper weight to the opinions
of his treating physicians. He acknowledges that under Black & Decker Disability Plan v. Nord,
538 U.S. 822 (2003), a treating physician’s opinion is not accorded any special deference or
weight. Seals argues, however, that because of the nature of his mental disability, the Report
should have given increased weight to the opinions of his treating physicians, even if it was not
required to do so.

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But, as explained above, see supra § III.A, the opinions of Seals’s treating physicians are
not worthy of added weight. If anything, they merit comparatively less weight in light of their
conclusory nature and the lack of psychological and psychiatric specialization on the part of two
of his treating physicians. The two psychiatric and psychological specialists to whom Seals was
referred by his treating physicians either reached no conclusive opinion concerning his disability
(Dr. Ingram) or concluded that he was able to return to work (Dr. Shafer). Seals’s second
objection is also without merit.
C.
Because Seals does not demonstrate any error in the Report’s findings or conclusions and
because a de novo review of the record reveals that the Plan Administrator and Judge Morris
reached the correct decision on Seals’s disability, his objections will be overruled. The Plan’s
motion to affirm the decision of the Plan Administrator will be granted and judgment entered
against Seals.
IV.
Accordingly, it is ORDERED that Plaintiff Kris Seals’s objections, ECF No. 21, are
OVERRULED.
It is further ORDERED that Judge Morris’s Report, ECF No. 20 is ADOPTED.
It is further ORDERED that Defendant Liberty Life Assurance Company of Boston’s
motion to affirm the decision of the Plan Administrator, ECF No. 12, is GRANTED.
It is further ORDERED that Plaintiff Kris Seals’s motion to reverse the decision of the
Plan Administrator, ECF No. 13, is DENIED.
It is further ORDERED that the decision of the Plan Administrator is AFFIRMED.

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It is further ORDERED that Plaintiff Kris Seals’s Complaint, ECF No. 1, is
DISMISSED with prejudice.

Dated: February 5, 2016

s/Thomas L. Ludington
THOMAS L. LUDINGTON
United States District Judge

PROOF OF SERVICE
The undersigned certifies that a copy of the foregoing order was served
upon each attorney or party of record herein by electronic means or first
class U.S. mail on February 5, 2016.
s/Michael A. Sian
MICHAEL A. SIAN, Case Manager

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