A major health insurance company has agreed to pay $41 million after losing a wrongful denial-of-claim lawsuit in Ohio. In 1998, Robert Dardinger sued Anthem Inc. for rejecting his wife's treatment claim the year before. Esther Dardinger, who died of brain cancer in 1997, was using a chemotherapy technique that Anthem considered experimental.

The case was originally decided in 1999 when an Ohio jury awarded Dardinger $49 million, the largest denial-of-claim damage award ever recorded against a health insurer in the state. The Ohio Supreme Court later reduced the award to $30 million plus interest, which totaled about $11 million. Anthem decided not to appeal the decision.

Denial-of-claim lawsuits have become a hot topic in the legal world in the wake of the UnumProvident Corporation scandal. In the fall of 2002, NBC's Dateline and the CBS news program 60 Minutes ran stories on UnumProvident's insurance claim policies, revealing the company's propensity to unilaterally deny claims without any basis. Thousands of lawsuits have been filed against the company.