Here is a great fact pattern that illustrates a number of recurring problems in ERISA litigation. In this case (Tocker v. Kraft Foods North America, Inc. Retirement Plan), decided by the Second Circuit last week, a mid-level benefits manager worked on accommodating the needs of a terminally ill plan participant, by working out an arrangement by which the participant could first receive long term disability benefits and then receive workforce reduction payments, rather than having to choose one or the other. Naturally, of course, since it turned into litigation, the arrangement did not work out without a hiccup, as it affected the participant’s pension credits. The participant sought to remedy that problem by use of a breach of fiduciary duty claim. The breach of fiduciary duty claim failed, however, because the benefits manager was found to have only been engaged in ministerial duties, and not fiduciary duties, and thus a breach of fiduciary duty action was not viable.

The case nicely illustrates and establishes the dividing line between fiduciary and non-fiduciary acts by executives of a company involved in running a company’s benefit plan, and the opinion’s first and best use will be in cases where that point must be established, particularly cases where one side or the other needs to prove that someone was, or was not, a fiduciary for purposes of a particular dispute. The decision is particularly on point with regard to the question of when does the provision of information about benefits render someone a fiduciary (the answer according to this decision is, effectively, never, although I am engaged in a purposeful bit of overstatement there).

However, it also illustrates a point I discuss in detail in an upcoming article in the Journal of Pension Benefits, which is the difficulty, under ERISA, of redressing problems in plan administration that are not merely denials of benefits clearly owed under a plan (and thus can be remedied under the denial of benefits prong of ERISA) and cannot be shown to involve fiduciary conduct. The dispute at issue in Tocker was exactly that type, and the plaintiff, despite having possibly been harmed by an operational misstep in implementing the agreed upon arrangement to coordinate the participant’s disability benefits and workforce reduction award, was unable to construct a viable cause of action under ERISA to address that problem and possible loss. The statute’s remedial rigidity had long been a problem in ERISA litigation over the years, impacting the ability of participants to address these types of problems. As I discuss in my upcoming article, this problem has likely been solved by the surcharge remedy recognized by the Supreme Court in its recent decision in Cigna v. Amara: the best approach open to the plaintiff in Tocker today would have been to structure his claim as one for equitable relief based on the surcharge remedy, rather than as a breach of fiduciary duty claim. When his case began, though, well before the decision in Amara, this option would not have been open to him.