A U.S. district court dismisses a case by a woman who claimed that Bankers Life misrepresented how the Medicaid annuity she purchased worked because the woman was not harmed by the alleged misrepresentation. Johnson v. Bankers Life and Casualty Company (U.S. Dist. Ct., W.D. Wis., No. 13-CV-144-WMC, Sept. 12, 2014).
Heather and Gary Johnson purchased an annuity from Bankers Life and Casualty Company that contained a rider that ensured that if the annuity was paying out, its income stream would not be included in a Medicaid eligibility determination. When purchasing the annuity, Mr. and Mrs. Johnson were told the rider would protect the assets in the annuity from being used to pay for nursing home care.
Mr. Johnson died without applying for Medicaid, and Mrs. Johnson received the proceeds of the annuity as the beneficiary. Mrs. Johnson sued Bankers Life, arguing she and her husband did not know the annuity had to be paying out in order to protect their assets from Medicaid. She filed for class certification and asked for summary judgment.
The U.S. District Court, Western District of Wisconsin, dismisses the case, holding that Mrs. Johnson lacks standing. According to the court, Mrs. Johnson's complaint "is simply that Bankers failed to tell its customers the full story regarding the extent to which its Medicaid annuities might not be excluded from eligibility requirements, but plaintiffs have not established, nor on the undisputed facts here could they establish, that any harm was caused by this failure." The court notes that the fact that someone in the putative class may have been harmed does not give Mrs. Johnson standing.
For the full text of this decision, go to: https://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/wisconsin/wiwdc/3:2013cv00144/33270/139/0.pdf?1410624389
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