Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 31, 1992 TAG: 9203310162
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: A-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Cox News Service
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The justices asked the U.S. solicitor general for the government's position on whether an employer has an unfettered right to change the terms of its group medical insurance, including the ability to stop coverage for a particular disease or injury.
The case involves a Houston worker who found that he had AIDS in 1987 - five years after he began his job in a music store.
John McGann told his employers, the H&H Music Company, about his illness and submitted claims for reimbursement of medical expenses under the company's group insurance plan.
The next year, the firm changed to a self-insurance plan that limited payment for AIDS-related medical expenses to $5,000 over the employee's lifetime.
Under federal law, self-insured employers are not covered by state insurance regulations. Thus, the case centers on whether McGann should have been protected by the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974.
Both a federal district judge and an appeals court in Texas ruled that the law lets employers design their own benefit plans, and said employees were not promised a fixed amount of coverage forever.
McGann died last year. His case is being pressed by his estate.
In other action Monday, the court:
Granted the Bush administration's request to participate in oral arguments April 22 in a key abortion case from Pennsylvania.
Left intact a ruling that forces two former Illinois prison officials to pay $5,000 to each of two inmates left in freezing cells for four days in 1982.
Agreed to consider overturning a $6.2 million award won by a company a California jury said was victimized by a scheme to monopolize sales of insoles for athletic shoes.
Said it will use a California case to resolve conflicting lower court rulings over when the filing of a lawsuit is a "sham" and can violate federal law.
by CNB