CATHY L. GOODMAN and LYLE P. ROBBINS v. Motion Picture Industry Health Plan for Active Participants

NOT FOR PUBLICATION
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
CATHY L. GOODMAN and LYLE
P. ROBBINS,
Appellants,
v.
MOTION PICTURE INDUSTRY HEALTH
PLAN FOR ACTIVE PARTICIPANTS,
Appellee.
No. 20-55937
D.C. No. 2:19-cv-03215-JFW-PJW
MEMORANDUM*
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Central District of California
John Walter, District Judge, Presiding
Submitted July 29, 2021**
Pasadena, California
Before: M. SMITH, LEE, Circuit Judges, and ROBRENO***, District Judge.
Cathy Goodman and Lyle Robbins (“Goodman”) appeal from the district
court’s entry of judgment in favor of the Motion Picture Industry Health Plan in this
* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
** The panel unanimously concludes this case is suitable for decision
without oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2).
*** The Honorable Eduardo C. Robreno, United States District Judge for
the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, sitting by designation.
FILED
AUG 16 2021
MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS

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termination of benefits action under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act
of 1974. Because the parties are familiar with the facts, we do not recount them
here. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, and we affirm.
1. The district court correctly held that the abuse of discretion standard of
review applies to the plan administrator’s decision to terminate Goodman’s spousal
benefits following her divorce from Robbins. “Where an ERISA Plan grants
discretionary authority to determine eligibility for benefits or to construe the terms
of the plan, a plan administrator’s interpretation of a plan is reviewed for abuse of
discretion.” Lehman v. Nelson, 862 F.3d 1203, 1216 (9th Cir. 2017) (citation
omitted). But if a plan administrator “invaded the province of statutory
interpretation,” then de novo review will apply. McDaniel v. Chevron Corp., 203
F.3d 1099, 1108 (9th Cir. 2000) (cleaned up).
Here, the Plan confers full discretion on the plan administrator to interpret the
terms of the Plan. Under the terms of the Plan, a divorced spouse “becomes
ineligible for benefits at the end of the month in which the date of the final decree of
dissolution of marriage or divorce is entered.” Goodman, however, argues that the
administrator’s interpretation of “final decree of dissolution of marriage or divorce”
was a legal question tied to the interpretation of the California Family Code. We
disagree. The only question was whether the state-court marital dissolution order
constituted a disqualifying event under the terms of the Plan. The phrase “final

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decree of dissolution of marriage or divorce” did not incorporate or rely on any
definitions from California state law. No statutory interpretation was necessary, so
abuse of discretion review applies.
2. The district court also correctly held that the plan administrator did not
abuse its discretion when it interpreted the term “final decree of dissolution of
marriage or divorce” to apply to the judgment of dissolution of marriage entered by
the Los Angeles County Superior Court in February 2016. In reviewing an
administrator’s interpretation of plan terms, the court should “ask whether the
Board’s interpretation is unreasonable, closely reading contested terms and applying
contract principles derived from state law, guided by the policies expressed in
ERISA and other federal labor laws.” O’Rourke v. N. Cal. Elec. Workers Pension
Plan, 934 F.3d 993, 1000 (9th Cir. 2019) (cleaned up).
With that framework in mind, it was not an abuse of discretion for the
administrator to treat the February 2016 judgment as a “final decree of dissolution
of marriage.” The judgment of dissolution clearly states: “Marital or domestic
partnership status is terminated and the parties are restored to the status of single
persons.” Even accepting Goodman’s argument that this judgment was merely
interlocutory because it did not resolve the divorce proceedings in their entirety, that
does not mean it was unreasonable for the plan administrator to treat the judgment
as a “final decree” for purposes of determining benefits eligibility. The judgment

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unambiguously terminated the status of the marriage, which reasonably counts as a
“final decree of dissolution of marriage” under the plain meaning of that phrase. It
was therefore not an abuse of discretion for the administrator to treat the 2016
judgment as a “final decree of dissolution of marriage” disqualifying Goodman from
eligibility for spousal benefits under the Plan.
3. Finally, the district court correctly held that the notice provisions of the
Plan complied with the general notice required by the Consolidated Omnibus Budget
Reconciliation Act (“COBRA”). A plan must “be written in a manner calculated to
be understood by the average plan participant.” 29 U.S.C. § 1022(a). Here, the Plan
documents stated: “To qualify for COBRA coverage, the Plan Office must be
notified within 60 days of the date that the final decree of divorce or dissolution is
filed with the court, or the date that coverage would have terminated because of the
divorce, whichever is later.” An average plan participant would have reasonably
understood the phrase “final decree of divorce or dissolution” to cover the February
2016 judgment of dissolution of marital status. Robbins, however, did not notify the
plan office of the divorce until December 2017. Because Robbins failed to notify
the plan office within 60 days of the filing of the judgment, the Plan was not
obligated to send Goodman any additional information about her right to continue
coverage. We thus agree with the district court that there was no COBRA violation,
and we also reject Goodman’s request for statutory penalties.

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AFFIRMED.

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