Defending the Disabled

The case that stands out for Eddie Dabdoub felt personal.

After the 2013 birth of her daughter, Julissa Bradshaw suffered a stroke so disabling, she couldn’t hold the baby. Her life insurance company denied her long-term disability benefits on the basis that her pregnancy was a preexisting condition that contributed to the stroke. The trial court ruled in favor of the insurance company.

The case caught the attention of Dabdoub, managing partner at Dabdoub Law Firm in Miami, where he focuses on complex life insurance cases and helping people with disability insurance claims. “She gave birth to a baby girl on the exact day my daughter was born,” he recalls. “And I said, ‘What if that was my daughter, my wife?’

He realized the case had far-reaching implications. He thought, “If this decision stands, then every woman who’s pregnant when she becomes insured—and who then becomes disabled afterward—is going to have a preexisting condition as long as her medical condition somehow relates to her pregnancy.”

So he picked up the phone and called the woman’s trial attorney. “I said, ‘I just read the Bradshaw decision. I know this is none of my business, but are you appealing this to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals?’” She wasn’t, so Dabdoub asked her to let Bradshaw know he was willing to pick up her case. His phone rang five minutes later.

When he brought the case before the U.S. Court of Appeals’ 11th Circuit, a judge asked the insurance company’s attorney if he knew what percentage of women in the U.S. suffered strokes following pregnancy. She’d researched the number: It was a fraction of 1%. 

“In that moment, I knew she was pissed off that the insurance company wasn’t paying this lady,” Dabdoub says. 

He crumpled his prepared rebuttal argument. “I just reassured the judge that everything she was feeling was correct,” he says.

The court found for Bradshaw, paving the way for her to receive all unpaid benefits, with interest, plus all benefits going forward through retirement age—about 60% of her former salary. 

Such victories are rare when long-term disability claims go to court, Dabdoub says, adding that insurance companies win most of these cases decided by the courts. That doesn’t feel fair to him. 

“You have to wonder, are all these people really just not disabled?” Dabdoub says. “Are these lousy attorneys and plaintiffs just exaggerating their illnesses? No, of course not.” 

He believes the law is skewed toward insurance companies, with a high burden of proof placed on the claimant and a legal process that confuses attorneys not well-versed in the area. Because Dabdoub’s firm works primarily on disability cases, he knows the system well. When his firm takes cases to court, the wins far outnumber the losses.

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Dabdoub always knew he would be a lawyer. A grandson of Palestinian immigrants, he grew up in Kingston, capital of Jamaica, in a typical neighborhood that was a melting pot of families of African, East Indian, Chinese and Middle Eastern descent.

His father, a member of parliament, was also a lawyer with a private practice focused on constitutional law. Dabdoub remembers spending after-school hours at his office while his mother ran errands. There was always a line to see his father.

“They were all poor,” Dabdoub says. “In Jamaica, people aren’t segregated by color, but they are segregated by economic status. The poor don’t have access.”

Looking back, Dabdoub appreciates his father’s compassion. “He was running a law practice and trying to be profitable. But he always listened to people and helped them.”

Dabdoub and three of his siblings followed their father into law. After graduating from high school in Jamaica, Dabdoub pursued an undergraduate degree in Miami, completed an MBA at Florida International University, then returned to the University of Miami to study law.

“I always knew I wanted to have my own law firm and I wanted to do something on a big scale,” he says. 

He clerked for Wagar Law Firm, a Coconut Grove firm that represented plaintiffs with disability claims. That led to a job with the firm, followed by a partnership, then a practice of his own. But it was while he was still a law clerk that Dabdoub’s future was mapped. 

A husband and father of two had fallen off a ladder and injured his back. His insurance company paid disability benefits for years, then stopped. 

“They decided that he’d had a miraculous recovery from what was obviously a permanent back injury,” Dabdoub says. 

The family was on the verge of losing their home. Dabdoub remembers how the man wept when he heard that the firm would recover his unpaid benefits. 

“There’s a feeling that comes over you when you decide, ‘This is what I’m going to do,’” Dabdoub says. “It was then that I saw the power of a law license if used for good.”