An Arizona resident has filed a lawsuit against insurance giant Unum, alleging the company denied his insurance claim in bad faith.

Craig Cheek, who filed the lawsuit, had a Unum disability insurance policy through his employer, Tyson Foods. The Unum lawsuit does not state the specific disability Cheek suffered, but states that his physicians and medical evidence supported the assertion that he was disabled.

According to the lawsuit, Cheek has exhausted Unum’s internal appeals process. This is important because the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), requires policyholders to use an insurance company’s internal appeals process before seeking civil action. ERISA is a law that was established in 1974 to help regulate retirement pensions and disability insurance after several well-publicized scandals. ERISA is designed to be enforced, in part, through individuals filing civil lawsuits.

Lawsuits like Cheek’s allege bad faith. Bad faith is a legal term that means a party in a contract is trying to avoid its contractual obligations. In the case of an insurance lawsuit, the contract is the insurance policy. Previous lawsuits have accused Unum of denying legitimate insurance claims through a variety of means. The alleged tactics to deny include having Unum’s in-house physicians override a patient’s physicians’ determinations, or ruling that a patient is not disabled when they are.

Unum’s actions have made them the subject of lawsuits and media scrutiny. The television news program 60 Minutes aired an exposé on Unum in 2002. The investigation uncovered reports of company policies and practices that promoted bad-faith insurance denials. The 60 Minutesinvestigation uncovered a Unum incentive called “the Hungry Vulture Award.” This honor was granted to the Unum agent who denied the most insurance claims. The program also featured an interview with a former Unum physician, who alleged that the company fired them after the physician refused to fabricate medical opinions to rule a patient disabled.

The Unum lawsuit is formally titled Craig J. Cheek v. Unum Life Insurance Company of America, et al, Case No. 5:14-cv-051150JLH, filed in the United States District Court for the Western Division of Arkansas, Fayetteville Division.