The Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit recently held that the plaintiffs’ opposition to a motion for summary judgment did not create an issue of material fact because it was based on conjecture and suspicious timing. In Herzog v. Graphic Packaging International, Inc., 742 F.3d. 802 (7th Cir. 2014) plaintiff sued her deceased husband’s employer and its insurer to recover benefits under a supplemental life insurance policy under which she was the beneficiary. The defendants claimed that her husband had cancelled the supplemental life insurance policy. The husband had been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. The wife could not conceive of why her husband would cancel a life insurance policy when he knew his death was eminent.
The defendants filed a motion for summary judgment. In support the defendants presented evidence that the husband cancelled the policy during the open enrollment period just months before his death. They submitted records of his benefit elections for 2009 which did not include a supplemental life insurance policy and his pay stubs for the first few months of 2009 which showed that there were no payroll deductions for the supplemental policy. In prior years, such deductions had been shown on his pay stubs. To refute the evidence and attempt to show that there were material facts the plaintiff pointed out that her husband was diagnosed with cancer in September 2008 and that the insurance policy was terminated two months later. She argued that these facts were sufficient to create a reasonable inference that the defendant’s surreptitiously terminated the supplemental policy without her husband’s knowledge or consent.
While the court acknowledged that it was sympathetic to the wife’s predicament it pointed out that inferences that are supported by only speculation or conjecture will not defeat a summary judgment motion and said:
“That is all we have here. Beyond the timing of the cancellation, Maureen has not presented any evidence that CPI or BC was responsible for the change in Richard’s benefits. But as we have said in other contexts, “[s]uspicious timing is rarely enough, by itself, to create a triable issue of fact. “Peele v. Burch, 722 F.3d 956, 960 (7th Cir. 2013). A reasonable juror could not conclude that Defendants terminated Richard’s policy without his knowledge or consent based solely on the fact that the cancellation occurred after his cancer diagnosis. Maureen needed some evidence of Defendants’ involvement in the decision in order for a reasonable juror to conclude that Defendants, not Richard, terminated the policy. Because she presented no such evidence, the court correctly awarded summary judgment to Defendants.”