Frank J. Caprio v. Bell Atlantic Sickness

PRECEDENTIAL
UNITED STATES COURT OF
APPEALS
FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT
No. 03-2253
FRANK J. CAPRIO,
Appellant
v.
BELL ATLANTIC SICKNESS
AND ACCIDENT PLAN; CORE, INC.;
VERIZON, INC.
On Appeal from the United States
District Court
for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
(D.C. Civ. No. 00-cv-06155)
Honorable R. Barclay Surrick,
District Judge
Submitted under Third Circuit
LAR 34.1(a) June 28, 2004
BEFORE: AMBRO, BECKER, and
GREENBERG, Circuit Judges
(Filed: July 8, 2004)
William T. Wilson
MacElree Harvey Ltd
17 West Miner Street
P.O. Box 660
West Chester, PA 19381
Attorney for Appellant
Steven D. Spencer
Kay Kyungsun Yu
Morgan, Lewis & Bockius
1701 Market Street
Philadelphia, Pa. 19103
Attorneys for Appellees
Verizon Communications
Inc. and Bell Atlantic Sickness
and Accident Disability
Benefit Plan
Douglas E. Ress
Kaufman, Coren, Ress & Weidman
1525 Locust Street
17th Floor
Philadelphia, Pa. 19102
James T. Finnigan
Rich May
176 Federal Street
Boston, MA 02110
Attorneys for Appellee CORE, Inc.
OPINION OF THE COURT
GREENBERG, Circuit Judge.
I. INTRODUCTION
This matter comes on before this
court on an appeal brought by Frank J.
Caprio from orders entered in the district
court on April 1, 2003, granting a motion
for summary judgment made by

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defendants Bell Atlantic Sickness and
Accident Plan (“Plan”), Verizon, Inc.
(“Verizon”) and CORE, Inc. (“CORE”)
(“appellees”), denying Caprio’s motion
for summary judgment, and entering
judgment in favor of the appellees. We
will vacate the orders and will remand
the case to the district court for further
proceedings.
The background of the case is as
follows. Caprio, who claimed to be
disabled and who had been employed by
Bell Atlantic Company of Pennsylvania
and later by its successor, Verizon,
brought this action against appellees
under ERISA, 29 U.S.C. § 1001 et seq.,
seeking benefits under a Sickness and
Accident Disability Benefit Plan that
Bell Atlantic and Verizon provided.1
Caprio made CORE a defendant because
it had administrative and fiduciary
responsibilities under the Plan and made
determinations regarding claimants’
eligibility for payments, including
determinations with respect to Caprio.
The Plan makes a distinction between
disabilities attributable to sickness and
those attributable to accidents and
includes administrative appeal
procedures. Inasmuch as Caprio was
awarded benefits based on sickness but
denied more generous accident benefits,
he seeks in this action to recover accident
benefits.
After certain proceedings in the
district court that we need not describe,
appellees moved for summary judgment,
but the court denied their motion without
prejudice in a memorandum opinion on
May 31, 2002. The court, largely
concerning its opinion with determining
its standard of review under Firestone
Tire & Rubber Co. v. Bruch, 489 U.S.
101, 109 S.Ct. 948 (1989), concluded
that it would examine the denial of
benefits under an arbitrary and capricious
standard of review. The district court
then considered our opinion in Pinto v.
Reliance Standard Life Insurance Co.,
214 F.3d 377, 387 (3d Cir. 2000),
quoting it for the point that “heightened
scrutiny is required when an insurance
company is both plan administrator and
funder.” The district court later in its
opinion cited Goldstein v. Johnson &
Johnson, 251 F.3d 433, 442 (3d Cir.
2001), concluding from that case that
Pinto “does not appear to be limited to
plans involving insurance companies.”
The district court noted that
appellees had submitted an affidavit
stating that CORE’s compensation was
“not tied in any way to the results of the
disability cases that it manages for Bell
Atlantic.” This representation led the
court to observe that, according to the
1Even though Caprio sued Verizon,
Inc. appellees indicate that there is no
such entity and that Verizon
Pennsylvania, Inc., a subsidiary of
Verizon Communications Inc., was
Caprio’s employer. Appellees indicate
that Caprio also misnamed the defendant
Plan. These mistakes may be rectified on
remand by appropriate amendments.

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affidavit, “CORE has no conflict of
interest in administering claims under the
Plan.” Nevertheless, inasmuch as the
court believed that Caprio was entitled to
answers to interrogatories he had served
before it definitively settled on its
standard of review, it denied appellees’
motion without prejudice and ordered
them to answer Caprio’s interrogatories
“for the limited purpose of determining
the appropriate standard of review in this
case.” Not inappropriately, the court did
not indicate what its result would be on
the merits depending on the standard of
review it selected.
The appellees apparently
answered the interrogatories as in their
brief they indicate, in a representation
that Caprio does not contradict, that after
“some discovery had been completed,”
appellees br. at 3, appellees renewed
their motion for summary judgment and
Caprio moved for summary judgment.
Appellees then indicate that the district
court, “without opinion, allowed the
motion of the defendants-appellees and
denied Caprio’s motion.” Id. at 4. The
appellees in their brief go on to explain:
The District Court
correctly held that CORE’s
decision must be reviewed
under the arbitrary and
capricious standard
because the [Plan] confers
upon CORE the
discretionary authority to
resolve all questions
relating to eligibility for
disability benefits. The
District Court’s decision
that CORE did not abuse
its discretion in denying
Caprio’s appeals
concerning the
classification of his [short
term disability] benefits
was also correct.
Id. at 11.
In fact, notwithstanding the
foregoing statement, the court did not
indicate, following the appellees’
renewal of their motion for summary
judgment, exactly what standard of
review it was using, though it had
considered this point preliminarily in its
May 31, 2002 opinion. Moreover, it
never said at any time that CORE “did
not abuse its discretion in denying
Caprio’s appeals . . . .” Indeed, as
appellees acknowledge, the court did not
render any opinion when it granted
summary judgment. Rather, it simply
entered orders granting appellees’
motion, denying Caprio’s motion, and
granting a judgment in favor of the
appellees, following which Caprio
appealed. We have jurisdiction under 28
U.S.C. § 1291.
II. DISCUSSION
Inasmuch as the district court did
not indicate why it was granting the
appellees’ motion for summary

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judgment, it did not act in conformity
with our direction in Vadino v. A. Valey
Engineers, 903 F.3d 253, 259 (3d Cir.
1990), to district courts in this circuit to
“accompany grants of summary
judgment . . . with an explanation
sufficient to permit the parties and this
court to understand the legal premise for
the court’s order.” See also Forbes v.
Township of Lower Merion, 313 F.3d
144, 148-49 (3d Cir. 2002). Even though
our standard of review is plenary with
respect to the order of the district court,
see Kemmerer v. ICI Americas Inc., 70
F.3d 281, 286 (3d Cir. 1995), and thus
we could determine this matter on the
merits without remanding, see Vadino,
903 F.2d at 259-60, we are satisfied that
the uncertainties surrounding the court’s
order in this complex matter, both as to
the standard of review it exercised and
the basis for its assessment of Caprio’s
claim on the merits, require that, in the
first instance, the district court explain
the reasons for its decision. See Gillis v.
Hoechst Celanese Corp., 4 F.3d 1137,
1149 (3d Cir. 1993).
The fact is that we are not certain
whether the district court granted
summary judgment for appellees through
the application of Firestone with or
without our refinement of that case in
Pinto. Moreover, whatever standard the
court followed, we do not know the
reasoning that led it to grant the
appellees’ motion for summary
judgment. Thus, we will vacate the
orders of the district court entered on
April 1, 2003, and remand the case to
that court for further proceedings. In
those proceedings the court may revisit
its substantive decision granting
appellees summary judgment if it
concludes that it would be appropriate to
do so.
We regret that the consequence of
our disposition is to put the parties to
additional expense which they fairly may
attribute to the district court’s failure to
conform to our directions in Vadino.
Accordingly, in order that the procedural
oversight here not be replicated, we point
out that in future cases in which district
courts overlook the procedure we set
forth in Vadino the parties should not
hesitate to bring that case to the court’s
attention.
We make this suggestion even
though we can understand why parties
might be wary of advising a district court
of its oversight, and we do not require
that they do so. Yet we note that our
suggestion is consistent with
requirements in other situations that
parties bring procedural requirements to
a court’s attention if it should overlook
them. Thus, Federal Rule of Civil
Procedure 24(c) provides that when the
constitutionality of any act of Congress
or statute of a State affecting the public
interest is drawn in question in an action
in which the United States or the State or
any agency, officer, or employee thereof
is not a party, the court shall notify the
Attorney General of the United States or
the State’s attorney general, depending
upon the statute implicated, as provided

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by 28 U.S.C. § 2403, so that he or she
may intervene on the question of
constitutionality. It further provides that
the party challenging the constitutionality
of the legislation “should call the
attention of the court to its consequential
duty.” Similarly, under some case law
when a party following trial moves for
judgment as a matter of law and, in the
alternative, moves for a new trial, it
should notify the court of the need for it
to make a contingent ruling on the
motion for a new trial if it grants the
judgment as a matter of law but does not
rule on the motion for a new trial. See
Lowenstein v. Pepsi-Cola Bottling Co. of
Pennsauken, 536 F.2d 9, 12 n.8 (3d Cir.
1976); Arenson v. Southern Univ. Law
Ctr., 43 F.3d 194, 196 (5th Cir. 1995).
Indeed, if the party does not notify the
court of this procedural requirement it
may lose the possibility of obtaining a
new trial if the judgment as a matter of
law in its favor is reversed. See
Lowenstein, 536 F.2d at 12 n.8.
In closing we point out that we
have not overlooked our authority to
retain jurisdiction as we did in Forbes
after we remanded that case to the
district court to specify the material facts
in issue which precluded the court from
granting the defendants’ motion for
summary judgment in a 42 U.S.C. § 1983
action on the basis of qualified immunity.
Forbes, 313 F.3d at 151. If we retained
jurisdiction, we then could determine the
matter without a new appeal being filed
following the remand, perhaps after
additional briefing. We have
determined, however, not to retain
jurisdiction because we have authorized
the court to revisit its decision on the
merits and thus it is conceivable that the
court’s outcome on remand could be
different from that which it reached
previously. Moreover, it is possible that
the disappointed party, after considering
the court’s explanation for its
determination, may not wish to pursue
the matter further.2
III. CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons we will
vacate the orders of the district court
entered on April 1, 2003, and will
remand the matter to that court for
further proceedings. The parties will
bear their own costs on this appeal.
2Of course, if the court does not grant
a summary judgment on the remand it is
unlikely that the order denying summary
judgment will be appealable, at least
before a final judgment is entered. See
In re Complaint of PMD Enters., Inc.,
301 F.3d 147, 149 (3d Cir. 2002).

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