MetLife’s Obesity Surgery Death Benefit Denial Upheld on Appeal

Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. properly denied accidental death benefits to the widow of a man who died in the hospital while recovering from a surgery aimed at treating his obesity, the Fifth Circuit ruled.

The widow failed to show that her husband’s death was solely caused by an accidental overdose on narcotics administered after his procedure, given his “preexisting infirmity” of morbid obesity, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit said Tuesday in an unpublished opinion. MetLife wasn’t wrong to deny accidental death benefits, the court said, because it was reasonable to conclude that the man’s death ...