I'm pretty new to this, and know very little about voluntary benefits. An employer offers voluntary short-term disability that is fully-insured. The plan has been in place for just over a year, and the carrier has not done any subsequent enrollments. The employer, apparently, has not made it a practice to offer the benefit to new hires. Now a pregnant employee, hired after the plan was in place, is wondering about the voluntary STD, and says she would have enrolled had the benefit been offered to her. Does the employer have any liability in this case?

Since it's a voluntary product, it's not an employer sponsored plan (unless the employer has inadvertantly made it so). Maybe she can go after the agent or agency that was doing the enrollments. But I don't think she has much of a case either way.

Here are four recent court decisions that would be worth reading on the topic:

Atwood v. Swire Coca-Cola USA, D. Utah, No. 2:03-cv-1014 TC, 1/19/07

Tennant v Swor, E.D. Texas, No. 4:05-cv-294, 4/3/2006

Negley v Breads of the World, 10th Cir., No. 05-1415, 3/2/2007

Green v ExxonMobil, 1st Cir., No. 06-1452, 12/8/2006

Another decision worthy of note was handed down on May 7, 2007, by the US Dist Court in Utah, in Hansen v Harper Excavating, Case No 2:05CV940 DAK.