Jackie Lemancyzk

Jackie Lemancyzk is a former Great Benefit claims examiner whose testimony becomes central to Rudy Baylor’s case for the Black family. She describes a company-wide experiment in denying claims, explains how Donny Ray Black’s file was handled, and recounts how she was fired shortly before she was due to give a deposition. Her evidence links the company’s financial strategy to the treatment of an individual dying policyholder—and makes her own attempt to silence part of that strategy’s story.

Identity and Employment

Lemancyzk worked for Great Benefit for six years and rose to senior claims examiner, the only woman to reach that position. Her career, as she describes it, was shaped by the conduct of male executives: she testified that promotions and pay were tied to sexual relationships, and that after she ended a relationship with Vice President of Claims Everett Lufkin, she was demoted to claims handler and her pay was cut by twenty percent. She also testified that another senior claims supervisor, Russell Krokit, pressured her to enter a relationship by linking her response to her employment prospects. Her account presents these practices as part of the workplace environment from which she was dismissed, rather than as a separate matter unrelated to the Black case.

Her employment ended on October 3, shortly before she was scheduled to give a deposition on October 5. Great Benefit’s account, conveyed to Rudy Baylor by Richard Pellrod, was that she had returned to southern Indiana. In fact, Lemancyzk remained in Cleveland, where she was living in a new apartment with an unlisted telephone number. After her dismissal, she was represented by Peter Corsa, a Cleveland lawyer whose practice included labor law and employment discrimination. She was preparing to seek redress for workplace grievances and, according to Corsa, possessed information about Great Benefit’s claims department.

Dismissal and Attempted Secrecy

Lemancyzk testified that Jack Underhall, Great Benefit’s in-house lawyer, summoned her to the office on the Saturday before her scheduled deposition. She said he gave her a choice between being described as fired, without compensation, or signing a resignation letter and receiving $10,000 in cash to keep quiet. She signed a letter stating that she was leaving for personal reasons, took the money, and signed an agreement barring her from discussing claims files. She said the Black file was specifically covered by that agreement and that Underhall did not let her keep a copy.

Her account also explained why she later agreed to testify. After speaking with a lawyer, she understood that the agreement she had signed was illegal. Corsa told Baylor she was frightened and emotionally fragile, and that it was uncertain whether she would appear. She nevertheless came to court. Her arrival surprised Leo F. Drummond, Great Benefit’s trial lawyer, although Lemancyzk had been listed as a potential witness in the pretrial order.

Testimony About the Black Claim

On the stand, Lemancyzk identified the Black claim as one assigned to her. She testified that, under the policy in effect at the time, claims were initially denied as a matter of routine. When asked whether this applied to all claims, she said that the company initially denied every claim and later reviewed some smaller ones; large claims, she testified, generally went unpaid unless policyholders involved a lawyer.

She dated the policy to January 1, 1991, and described it as a twelve-month experiment. Claims above $1,000 were to be denied during that period, regardless of their merit; some smaller claims were also denied when the company could find an arguable reason. In her account, the company expected to compare the money saved with the cost of quick settlements and retain the difference. She estimated that the scheme generated about $40 million in additional returns. Her testimony thus gave the jury both a duration and a financial scale for the practice, rather than leaving it as an isolated mistake in the handling of one application.

Lemancyzk said the Black claim was first denied like the others, but its large value and Donny Ray’s diagnosis drew special attention. She testified that the company’s claims staff knew the policy did not exclude bone marrow transplants, and that Russell Krokit monitored her handling of the file after the diagnosis of acute leukemia was noticed. She recalled medical information indicating that Donny Ray’s leukemia would return and eventually prove fatal without a transplant. According to her account, the information was shown to Krokit, who passed it to Everett Lufkin; the denial continued despite the medical record and the policy’s omission of a transplant exclusion. She explained the company’s calculation as a bet that the insured would not consult a lawyer.

Role at Trial and Narrative Significance

Lemancyzk’s testimony joined two lines of evidence that might otherwise have seemed distinct: the company’s treatment of its employees and its treatment of its policyholders. Her account of the resignation letter and the cash payment challenged the explanation for her departure; her account of the 1991 experiment supplied a corporate rationale for the repeated denials in the Black file. In Rudy Baylor’s closing argument, her testimony and Great Benefit’s figures helped him present the denials as a planned practice rather than a collection of unrelated claims decisions.

Great Benefit tried to undermine her. Underhall testified that Lemancyzk had lied about the cash and agreement, the denial scheme, her workplace allegations, and the handling of her dismissal. He characterized her work as poor and said the company had offered her a resignation to protect her employment record. But when Baylor asked about her personnel file, Underhall said it was not in court, though it was supposed to contain evaluations and records of disciplinary or employment actions. He also denied that the agreement existed. Baylor’s questioning left the denial exposed to the jury without producing the missing document, and Underhall’s attack did not erase the testimony the jury had already heard.

The trial’s presentation gave Lemancyzk’s evidence a specific place in a larger account of the Black claim. Dot Black’s testimony established the family’s repeated efforts to obtain coverage and the sequence of denial letters; Lemancyzk explained the internal policy and the knowledge behind the handling of the file; and Donny Ray’s recorded testimony made the human consequence present to the jury. In the closing argument, Baylor used her description of the year-long experiment alongside claim statistics to explain how the corporate policy could produce both broad savings and an individual denial. Lemancyzk’s role is therefore not simply that of a witness to misconduct: she is the link between the company’s internal claims process and the consequences that process had for the Black family.

After the trial, reports described investigations of Great Benefit in at least seven states and anticipated further policyholder suits. The evidence establishes that Lemancyzk’s testimony helped disclose the company’s practices to the jury, but it does not specify what later became of her own employment or claims. Her documented significance rests on what she brought into the courtroom: the denial plan’s stated operation, its estimated financial return, and the company’s awareness of the danger facing Donny Ray.