Kantor & Kantor LLP

National

Regional

Los Angeles

San Francisco

Practice Areas

• Employee Benefits (ERISA) Law
  Kantor & Kantor represents plan participants and beneficiaries - never insurers, plans, or employers - in disputes over benefits governed by ERISA. The firm handles denied and terminated claims across long-term and short-term disability, health and medical benefits, life and accidental death coverage, and pension and retirement benefits, guiding clients from the administrative appeal through federal district court and, where warranted, appellate review. That exclusively plaintiff-side focus has given the firm unusual depth in the procedural terrain that decides ERISA cases: the scope of the administrative record, standard-of-review disputes, conflicts of interest in claim administration, and the remedies available to wrongfully denied claimants. The firm litigates individual and class claims nationwide, with a particular commitment to claimants whose conditions are routinely under-recognized by insurers.
• Life Insurance Coverage
  Kantor & Kantor represents beneficiaries whose life insurance claims have been denied, delayed, or underpaid, working only on the claimant side. The firm handles the recurring grounds insurers use to avoid payment: rescission and misrepresentation claims within the contestability period, alleged lapse for nonpayment where required notice was never given, disputes over cause of death and policy exclusions, waiver-of-premium and disability-continuation issues, and failed conversion or portability after an insured leaves employment. The firm litigates both ERISA-governed group life and accidental death policies and individually owned coverage, a distinction that determines the available remedies, and one many families learn about only after a denial. It also represents beneficiaries in competing-claim and interpleader disputes and pursues bad faith and extracontractual damages where state law permits.
• Long-Term Care
  Kantor & Kantor represents policyholders and their families in disputes over long-term care benefits, exclusively on the claimant side. Long-term care denials turn on issues found nowhere else in insurance litigation: whether the insured meets the policy's activities-of-daily-living or cognitive-impairment triggers, whether a chosen facility or home care provider satisfies licensing and staffing definitions written decades earlier, elimination periods, daily and lifetime benefit caps, and post-claim underwriting used to rescind coverage years after issuance. The firm also handles improper lapse, including terminations where an insurer failed to honor the notice and reinstatement protections owed to policyholders with cognitive impairment — and pursues bad faith and extracontractual remedies under state law, which governs most individually purchased policies. The firm brings particular sensitivity to claims where the policyholder can no longer advocate for themselves.
• Long-Term Disability
  Kantor & Kantor represents disabled claimants - never insurers or employers - in disputes over long-term disability benefits, from the administrative appeal through federal court. The firm handles denials and mid-claim terminations across the grounds insurers rely on most: contested "own occupation" and "any occupation" definitions at the 24-month transition, mental health and self-reported symptom limitations, pre-existing condition exclusions, offsets against Social Security and other income, and adverse determinations built on paper file reviews, compelled examinations, and surveillance. The firm litigates both ERISA-governed group policies and individually purchased coverage, including professional and physician policies where state law permits bad faith and extracontractual damages. It has developed particular depth in claims involving conditions insurers routinely discount, such as ME/CFS, Long Covid, fibromyalgia, autoimmune and neurological disease, and chronic pain, where the medical record is contested rather than the policy language.
• Pension
  Kantor & Kantor represents participants, retirees, and beneficiaries in disputes over pension and retirement plan benefits, working exclusively on the claimant side. The practice covers wrongly denied or miscalculated defined benefit pensions, service-credit and vesting disputes, improper benefit suspensions and offsets, spousal and survivor annuity rights, and claims arising from plan amendments that reduce accrued benefits. The firm also pursues breach of fiduciary duty claims and actions to compel production of plan documents, along with statutory penalties where administrators fail to meet ERISA's disclosure obligations. Because pension disputes often turn on plan interpretation, actuarial calculation, and decades-old recordkeeping, the firm's approach pairs close document work with the federal-court litigation experience it has built representing benefits claimants nationwide.

Awards

Offices & Contacts