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Unum

Running Header: UNUM PROVIDENT
By: Sonya Y. Matthews

Unum Limited was established in 1848, based out of Chattanooga, Tennessee. Unum is a provider of group and individual disability insurance products in the United States and the United Kingdom. The company has been up against several lawsuits from patients to physician. Unum is the largest disability insurance company worldwide. It provides long-term care insurance and life insurance. Unum is   accused of making quotes on old and closed accounts. Other legal attorneys have said that Unum were denying many disability claims in several states. There were over 215,000 disability claims that Unum had to review and agreed to pay. Unum has been under investigation for a number of years for the practice of terminating and denying legitimate disability claims. Over 30 states were approved for a settlement against UnumProvident Corp in December of 2004. UnumProvident had to review over 200,000 claims and pay a $15 million dollar fine for not complying with state guidelines to file disability claims (Beasley, 2007).

Some of the issues the company faced were (1) denying and terminating disability policy without notice to its policyholders, (2) lawsuits from doctors, (3) fines, and penalties paid to the federal and state government. Unum has been facing several lawsuits over the last decade.   A cardiologist, Joanne Ceimo, filed a lawsuit against the company for denying her disability claims. Ms. Ceimo has a herniated disk in her neck which prevents her from performing any surgeries. Ms. Ceimo sue to insurance company one was MetLife and the other was Unum. The court awarded her $85.7 million and punitive damages were $79 million which was reduced to $7 million in April of 2003(New York Times).
Unum has been branded as a bad company to get disability insurance from, but the record revenue for the company has been very high regardless of all the lawsuits that have been filed. In October of 2007 a California jury...