UnitedHealthcare Beats Class Certification in Mental Health Suit

UnitedHealthcare Insurance Co., United Behavioral Health, and MultiPlan Inc. won’t have to face as a class action allegations that they underpaid claims for mental health treatment.

The case was brought by Apple Inc. and Tesla Inc. workers who participated in benefits plans offered through their employer. The anonymized plaintiffs alleged when they sought out-of-network services related to their alcohol use disorder, the health insurance companies underpaid their share of the cost.

The US District Court for the Northern District of California on March 31 denied the plantiffs’ motion to certify the case as a class action. The ruling comes soon after the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled in a separate case that reprocessing claims, one of the plaintiffs’ primary demands here, was not an appropriate venue of relief in such suits under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act. In March, the Labor Department filed an amicus brief urging the appeals court to reconsider.

Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ruled that, even if the Ninth Circuit’s Wit v United Behavioral Health had not foreclosed the plaintiffs’ claims for class-wide injunctive relief, their employers have stopped using either United or Viant OPR, the company that determined what the insurance companies should pay for out-of-network reimbursement.

The plaintiffs “do not and, ostensibly, cannot, allege a threat of imminent harm,” Rogers wrote. Their attempts to distinguish this case from Wit “on the ground that the battle concerns underpayment rather than denial of benefits do not persuade.”

Arnall Golden Gregory LLP, DL Law Group, and Napoli Shkolnik PLLC represented the plaintiffs. Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP represented UnitedHealthcare and United Behavioral Health. Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP and Phelps Dunbar LLP represented MultiPlan.

The case is LD v. United Behav. Health, N.D. Cal., No. 4:20-cv-02254, 3/31/23.