Parkinson’s Doesn’t Improve: District of Oregon Reinstates ERISA Long-Term Disability Benefits Unum Terminated After Surveilling a Claimant’s Astrology Hobby

In Zayn v. Unum Life Insurance Company of America, No. 3:25-cv-01190-JR, 2026 WL 2719813 (D. Or. Sept. 15, 2026), United States Magistrate Judge Jolie A. Russo granted judgment to Plaintiff and ordered reinstatement of the long-term disability benefits Unum had terminated, holding that a claimant with young-onset Parkinson’s disease remained unable to perform any gainful occupation under her ERISA-governed group plan.

What was Plaintiff’s condition and claim?

Plaintiff held a bachelor’s degree in business marketing and a master’s in business management, and had worked as a project manager in the pharmacological field since 2006, most recently for CVS. In October 2019, after months of physical and mental symptoms, she was diagnosed with young-onset Parkinson’s disease at age thirty-seven and began treatment with neurologist Dr. Elise Anderson. She continued working until June 2021, when she stopped and filed a claim, citing cognitive impairment and difficulty remembering details, focusing, and multitasking. Unum approved long-term disability benefits effective December 2021.

Over the following years, Plaintiff’s providers documented progressive symptoms including cognitive slowing, word-finding difficulty, fatigue, fine motor problems, gait and balance issues, and chronic back pain. A February 2022 neuropsychological evaluation by Dr. Audrey Sherman found intellectual abilities in the average to high average range alongside several areas of mild weakness, including borderline speed on complex problem-solving and cognitive fatigue, and documented a significant decline compared to testing two years earlier. The Social Security Administration found Plaintiff disabled as of November 2022.

Why did Unum terminate benefits?

After paying benefits for nearly three years, and after its own July 2024 internal note concluded that improvement was “not expected,” Unum continued reviewing the claim and located Plaintiff’s Instagram account and a website for an astrology-reading business she managed, which advertised readings at $120 per hour. Unum also commissioned surveillance. Over sixteen hours across two days, the investigator observed Plaintiff for roughly ten minutes, during which she moved recycling bins to the curb one at a time and pulled three handfuls of weeds.

Unum then obtained a series of file reviews. Dr. Joseph Antaki opined the record no longer supported disability, pointing to the social media activity and routine examination findings. Neurologist Dr. Zeyad Morcos concurred, but his report recited information from a different claimant’s file and attributed it to Plaintiff. Psychologist Dr. Kathleen Rhyner reviewed only Dr. Sherman’s 2022 evaluation and concluded it showed no cognitive impairment, while acknowledging it lacked performance validity measures. Neurologist Dr. Kaiwen Lin conducted the final review and repeated the same inaccurate information drawn from the other claimant’s file. Unum terminated benefits in November 2024 and upheld that decision on appeal in June 2025.

What standard of review did the court apply?

The parties stipulated to de novo review, so the court gave no deference to Unum’s decision and instead determined in the first instance whether Plaintiff had established disability under the plan. The court noted that Plaintiff bore the burden of proof, that this burden remained with her even though benefits were being terminated after an initial grant, and that Unum was not required to prove medical improvement. The dispositive question was whether the record as a whole demonstrated that Plaintiff was unable to perform any gainful occupation.

How did the court weigh the treating providers against Unum’s file reviewers?

The court credited Plaintiff’s long-standing treating providers over Unum’s non-examining consultants. Dr. Anderson, Plaintiff’s treating neurologist since onset, provided five disability opinions, documented both subjective and objective evidence of progressive Parkinson’s, rebutted Dr. Antaki’s report, and specifically addressed the physical and mental demands of Plaintiff’s occupation. The court found her opinions, and to a lesser extent those of nurse practitioner Heather Pfeiffer and chiropractor Dr. Lori Brown, more reliable and probative than the consulting reports. It noted that Ms. Pfeiffer’s one-time misidentification of the condition as multiple sclerosis did not undermine her assessments given the record as a whole.

The court found Unum’s reviews significantly less reliable. It emphasized that Dr. Morcos relied on another claimant’s file and that Dr. Lin repeated that same error, that Dr. Rhyner’s opinion addressed only a 2022 evaluation rendered nearly three years before the termination, and that none of Unum’s physicians had examined Plaintiff or could assess the credibility of her symptom reports firsthand.

Did Plaintiff’s activities and the objective testing undermine her claim?

No. On the subjective-evidence argument, the court explained that Parkinson’s was established by objective metrics Unum had accepted when it first granted benefits, and that Dr. Sherman’s testing in fact showed several areas of mild weakness rather than contradicting the claim. The court added that the absence of validity testing did not mean Dr. Sherman understated Plaintiff’s abilities; it meant only that the results were unconfirmed.

On the activities, the court found that Plaintiff’s travel, gardening, and astrology hobby were relatively minimal, were not transferable to sustained employment, and were consistent with the medical record and Plaintiff’s own accounts. It observed there is no logical incompatibility between limited activity and disability from full-time work, and noted that Plaintiff’s providers were aware of and had encouraged these activities. The court also treated the SSA’s award as probative evidence of disability that Unum had failed to meaningfully reconcile.

What did the court decide?

The court denied Unum’s motion for judgment and granted Plaintiff’s, holding that her chronic, degenerative condition produced cognitive impairments and fatigue that prevented reliable, consistent work. The court ordered reinstatement of long-term disability benefits effective November 27, 2024, and directed the parties to meet and confer on back benefits, interest, attorney fees, and costs.