MetLife Long-Term Care Class Action Lawsuits and Settlements

The main MetLife long-term care class action lawsuit that produced money for policyholders was Newman v. Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, which settled in February 2020 and covered 4,362 people who bought policies with the “Reduced-Pay at 65” rider. Other class actions challenging MetLife’s premium increases on standard long-term care policies, including Collins in Missouri and Gaudet in California, have been dismissed. If you hold a MetLife long-term care policy and are facing a rate hike, whether you have a claim depends heavily on the specific rider and language in your policy.

The Newman Settlement: Who Got Paid and Why

The Newman case was about a specific promise. Policyholders who chose the Reduced-Pay at 65 rider paid higher premiums before age 65 in exchange for a guarantee that their premiums would drop to 50% of the pre-65 amount once they turned 65. Instead, MetLife imposed class-wide increases on those policyholders after they crossed that threshold, with some hikes reaching 102%.¹

Lead plaintiff Margery Newman filed suit in the Northern District of Illinois (Case No. 1:16-CV-03530), alleging breach of contract and violations of the Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act.² The trial court initially dismissed the complaint, but in February 2018 the Seventh Circuit reversed. The appeals court found the rider’s language ambiguous: the word “class” in MetLife’s premium-adjustment clause was undefined, and the Reduced-Pay at 65 brochure could reasonably be read as promising a fixed premium after 65.³

On February 20, 2020, U.S. District Judge Thomas M. Durkin gave final approval to a settlement covering 4,362 policyholders. Under the deal, MetLife agreed to:

Cap post-65 premiums at 50% of each class member’s pre-age-65 amount going forward, and waive its right to future increases for those policyholders
Refund 30% of all overcharged post-65 premiums it had already collected
Pay a proportional refund to policyholders who had reduced their coverage to avoid the increases, calculated as 30% of the overcharge relative to the reduced benefit

If you paid extra for that specific rider and were billed at more than half your pre-65 premium after turning 65, you were the target of this settlement.²

Collins: The Inflation-Rider Case That Failed

Policyholders with a different feature — the “5% Automatic Compound Inflation Protection Rider” — tried a similar theory and lost. That rider raised the daily benefit amount by 5% per year and stated that premiums were “not expected to increase” as a result. It also carried a reservation: “We reserve the right to adjust premiums on a class basis.”⁴

Four St. Louis-area plaintiffs — Dennis G. Collins, Suzanne Collins, David Butler, and Lucia Bott — sued in February 2022 in the Eastern District of Missouri. They argued MetLife imposed the rate hikes not because of legitimate changes in morbidity or mortality assumptions but because projected future daily benefits had grown unsustainably.⁵ Judge Ronnie L. White dismissed the complaint in February 2023 under the filed-rate doctrine, which bars courts from second-guessing insurance rates that state regulators have already reviewed and approved.

The Eighth Circuit affirmed in September 2024 and went further. Writing for the panel, Judge Loken held that MetLife’s express reservation of the right to adjust premiums defeated both the fraud claims and the breach-of-implied-covenant claim. The court also ruled that the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act and Illinois Consumer Fraud Act claims failed because state insurance regulators oversaw the premium adjustments, and some state rules actually required them.⁶ A petition for certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court (No. 24-680) was filed in December 2024.⁴

Gaudet: The California Notice Case Still on Appeal

Germaine Gaudet filed a proposed class action in 2025 in the Northern District of California, focused not on the amount of the increase but on when MetLife disclosed it. MetLife had asked the California Department of Insurance for a 105% rate hike; in January 2021 the CDI approved a larger 123.8% increase, phased in over four years. Gaudet alleged fraud by omission and violations of California’s Unfair Competition Law and Insurance Code Section 10234.8, arguing MetLife should have disclosed its rate plans before the CDI acted.⁷

On August 25, 2025, U.S. District Judge P. Casey Pitts dismissed the case. He held that an insurer’s disclosure duty applies only to changes that are “impending” — meaning about to happen or already settled — and that MetLife’s plans were speculative until CDI approval, since the department had the power to reject them and had done so before. Once the CDI approved the increase, MetLife’s notice was timely.⁷ Gaudet amended and Judge Pitts dismissed again on March 26, 2026. Gaudet has appealed to the Ninth Circuit (Case No. 26-2761), and that appeal was pending in mid-2026.⁸

Why Most MetLife Rate-Hike Suits Lose

Two legal barriers keep defeating these cases.

The first is the language in the policies themselves. Standard MetLife long-term care contracts reserve the right to adjust premiums on a class basis. Courts have read that reservation as fatal to fraud claims: if the policy told you premiums could go up, you cannot claim you were deceived when they did. The Eighth Circuit made this point directly in Collins.⁶

The second is the filed-rate doctrine. Because state insurance regulators review and approve LTC premium increases, courts defer to that regulatory process rather than substitute their own view of what premiums are reasonable. Both the Collins district court and the Eighth Circuit leaned on this reasoning.⁵

The Newman settlement was the exception because the Reduced-Pay at 65 rider went beyond the standard reservation of rights. The Seventh Circuit found the specific promise of a 50%-of-pre-65 premium ambiguous enough to survive dismissal, and that pushed the case toward settlement rather than a defense win.³ Policyholders whose policies contain only the general reservation clause have had a much harder time in court.

Nationwide certification has also been a problem for plaintiffs. A February 2026 ruling in the Northern District of Illinois denied certification in five consolidated challenges to state-by-state increases, with courts finding that variations in state law and individual policyholder circumstances defeat commonality.⁶

What MetLife Policyholders Are Facing on Premiums

MetLife stopped selling new individual long-term care policies after December 30, 2010, and stopped enrolling new members in group and employer-sponsored plans the following year.⁹ It still manages the closed block of policies already in force, and rate increases on that block have continued.

Recent examples show how large those increases can be. In California, the CDI approved a 123.8% increase in 2021, phased in over four years.⁷ In July 2024, approximately 8,300 Ohio policyholders received notice of a 144% annual premium increase.⁵ A 2021 Virginia regulatory filing recorded MetLife’s own actuary saying existing premium schedules were “not sufficient to cover anticipated costs” and could not be sustained without further increases.¹⁰ Historical data from the California Department of Insurance shows the pattern is not new: between 2010 and 2016, MetLife sought increases of 50% to 100% in many states, though regulators often approved less than requested.¹¹

What This Means If You Hold a MetLife LTC Policy

Start by pulling out your policy and looking at the riders. If you bought the Reduced-Pay at 65 rider and were part of the Newman settlement class, benefits should already have been applied. If you have a 5% Automatic Compound Inflation Protection Rider and want to challenge a rate hike, the Collins ruling is the current obstacle, and unless the Supreme Court takes the case that outcome controls in the Eighth Circuit and is persuasive elsewhere. If you are in California and received short notice of the 2021 increase, the Gaudet appeal in the Ninth Circuit is the case to watch.⁸

MetLife is not the only long-term care insurer facing this litigation. Genworth, John Hancock, CNA, Prudential, MassMutual, and Unum have all been sued or investigated over similar rate-hike practices, and the legal barriers policyholders face are largely the same across the industry.

1
ElderLawAnswers. Long-Term Care Insurance Company Breached Policyholders’ Contract by Raising Premiums
2
Goldenberg Schneider. MetLife Long Term Care Reduced Pay at 65
3
FindLaw. Newman v. Metropolitan Life Insurance Company
4
U.S. Supreme Court. Collins v. Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, Petition for Writ of Certiorari
5
InsuranceNewsNet. MetLife Vindicated in Class Action Lawsuit Over LTC Rate Hikes
6
FindLaw. Collins v. Metropolitan Life Insurance Company
7
Justia. Gaudet v. Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, Case No. 25-cv-00694
8
PACER Monitor. Gaudet v. Metropolitan Life Insurance Company
9
The New York Times. MetLife to Stop Selling Long-Term Care Policies
10
Virginia Bureau of Insurance. MetLife LTC Annual Rate Report, SERFF Tracking Number META-133000568
11
California Department of Insurance. MetLife LTC Rates History