The Second Circuit these days is the gift that just keeps on giving when it comes to ERISA litigation, and for that matter to blogging about ERISA litigation. Following up hard on the heels of its thorough and legitimately interesting opinion on employer stock drop litigation in Citigroup and McGraw-Hill, the court issued this much more low profile opinion in Novella v. Westchester County. Interestingly, while the employer stock drop cases received full blown press coverage – and while my own view is they essentially spelled the death knell for straight forward stock drop claims as a viable cause of action – I would bet a doppio that the much less noticed Novella case will be the far more cited case as time goes on. The Novella decision offers far more of relevance to the day in, day out run of ERISA cases than does Citigroup/McGraw-Hill, with its focus on one big ticket item, namely the exposure of major corporations to employer stock drop claims, and as a result, it is likely to be turned to by ERISA litigators and courts far more often over the years ahead than are its more high profile cousins.

Novella provides a thorough review and analysis of at least three key, and often encountered, issues in ERISA litigation, particularly denial of benefit cases; more than that, it provides the imprimatur of one of the country’s leading benches to a particular analysis of these issues, which are otherwise subject to some conflicting, and sometime unsettled, interpretations in various circuits. Here they are, in no particular order.

In the first instance, the court provides a clear example of how to determine the reasonableness of a plan administrator’s analysis of its plan terms, and gives some guidance to the proper use of long-accepted canons of contract construction in this context.

In the second, the court addresses one of the more enigmatic issues in denial of benefit claims, which is the question of whether a plan can defend against litigation by relying on an argument not raised in the administrative process before the plan during which the benefits were denied. The court’s words on this point are telling:

It is apparent from the record, however, that the defendants did not use Section 3.16 to calculate Novella’s pension in the first instance. As the district court noted, the defendants identified this section as justification for their calculation of Novella’s pension “for the first time in litigation.” They did not cite this section of the Plan in their letters to Novella explaining the calculation of his benefits. Nor did they indicate to Novella at any point during his administrative appeals that their two-rate calculation relied in any way on section 3.16. To permit them to assert this newly coined rationale in litigation despite their failure to rely upon it during the internal Fund proceedings that preceded this lawsuit would subvert some of the chief purposes of ERISA exhaustion: to “ ‘uphold Congress'[s] desire that ERISA trustees be responsible for their actions, not the federal courts,’ “ and to “ ‘provide a sufficiently clear record of administrative action’ “ should litigation ensue. It would also clearly be inequitable.

This item is a huge point that should not be overlooked. Lawyers for participants will often argue – whether calling it waiver, estoppel, or something else – that a plan cannot shift its grounds during litigation from what the plan administrator relied upon during the processing of the participant’s claim for benefits, including the participant’s appeal to the plan of an initial denial of benefits. Here, in this language from the court, is a striking, easily lifted passage supporting that exact argument. There is a proactive lesson to be learned from this, beyond just the question of how the court’s ruling on this point affects cases in litigation, and that lesson is that plan administrators must be careful to raise in their denials all plan terms and grounds they believe justify a denial. This requires more work and more attention during the claim processing and appeal stage, including – if the amounts at stake warrant it – getting the benefits lawyers involved.

And finally, I am fond of the court’s analysis of the application of ERISA’s statute of limitations, more specifically the court’s analysis of when the statute of limitations starts running on a claim involving the miscalculation of benefits. The events underlying such a claim occur over a broad swath of time, during which benefits are calculated, granted, appealed, recalculated, denied, and the like. The court narrows down the point in that run of events at which the statute of limitations starts to run, finding that “the statute of limitations will start to run when there is enough information available to the [plaintiff] to assure that he knows or reasonably should know of the miscalculation.” This is a fact based inquiry, but at least it is a standard one on which all parties can focus in litigating such disputes.