Unum Owes Lawyer Fees to Litigator With Post-Covid Disability

A litigator suffering from post-Covid fevers, brain fog, and fatigue won nearly $170,000 in attorneys’ fees and costs after successfully suing Unum Life Insurance Co. of America for disability benefits.

Judge Thomas S. Zilly awarded the litigator the majority of his requested attorneys’ fees after making reductions to his lawyers’ hourly rates and imposing a 10% “haircut” to account for the “thin margin” by which he prevailed in the case. Zilly also granted Unum’s request to put the fee award on hold while it pursues an appeal, provided that the insurer files a bond worth 125% of the total awarded fees and costs.

The order, issued Monday in the US District Court for the Western District of Washington, comes two months after Zilly awarded plaintiff William Abrams disability benefits through July 2023 in one of the first court rulings in a case seeking disability benefits under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act for ailments related to Covid-19.

Similar cases have been filed by a marathon runner in her early 30s, a software developer who contracted Covid while pregnant, a former Expedia Inc. product manager who developed pneumonia after contracting Covid in February 2020, and a MFS Investment Management employee experiencing significant fatigue and shortness of breath after his bout with Covid in March 2020.

Abrams, a marathon runner scheduled to run multiple races in 2020, joined Schwabe, Williamson & Wyatt PC as a shareholder and litigator in 2019, working nearly 12-hour days and earning $525,000 per year before bonuses.

In April 2020, he began experiencing frequent fevers, severe fatigue, and mental fogginess that caused a sharp decline in his legal abilities.

He stopped working and sought benefits under a Unum policy providing a maximum of 36 months of disability benefits to firm shareholders. He submitted medical records from multiple doctors, including three who diagnosed him with Long Covid and four who diagnosed him with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

Zilly agreed that Abrams was entitled to disability benefits, noting that being a trial lawyer is “mentally and physically grueling” work that’s “akin to writing, directing, producing, and starring in a play simultaneously.”

Abrams is represented by Sirianni Youtz Spoonemore Hamburger PLLC and Megan E. Glor, Attorneys at Law. Unum is represented by Lane Powell PC.

The case is Abrams v. Unum Life Ins. Co. of Am., 2023 BL 62123, W.D. Wash., No. 2:21-cv-00980, 2/27/23.