Boston ERISA Law Blog

Thought I would pass this along right now, while the article is still available to non-subscribers - I suspect if you read this post tomorrow, you will have to subscribe to get access to the article by then. Either way, here’s an interesting article available on Lawyers USA today on the LaRue decision, and on the broader topic of what impact it will have. I am quoted in it on the issue of whether it will spawn more litigation; to quote the article:

Some see the ruling as spawning multiple lawsuits by individual 401(k) account holders.

"It will open the door to a lot more litigation. I don't think it will be an avalanche, but plan sponsors are definitely looking at death by a thousand cuts," said Stephen Rosenberg, an attorney with The McCormack Firm in Boston, who blogs on ERISA issues.

This is pretty consistent with what I said in my post last Friday, in which I discussed my views about how much litigation will result from this case. It is hard, as I said then, to quantify, but it is clear that the case paves the way for sponsors to face a steady stream of smaller cases, whereas in the past they really - or at least predominately - only had to worry about whether they were in a position to be targeted for a large dollar value, class wide type suit.