Last week, I spoke on a panel with, among others, Trucker Huss’ Joe Faucher, who discussed some aspects of Ninth Circuit ERISA jurisprudence with a mostly East Coast-centric audience. A week later, that circuit has turned out two of the more interesting and potentially significant appellate decisions in ERISA that any court has produced in awhile.

In the first one, Moyle v. Liberty Mutual Retirement Benefits Plan, the Ninth Circuit tackled an old chestnut in ERISA litigation, namely the argument that a plaintiff could not bring an action alleging both the wrongful denial of benefits and seeking equitable relief under ERISA as well. Many courts – and pretty much every defendant ever sued by a plaintiff making both claims – have taken the position over the years that Supreme Court precedent precludes bringing both claims, and that, if a plaintiff pled both claims, the equitable relief claim could and should be dismissed at the outset of the case. As a long-time commercial litigator who has litigated a range of cases from IP disputes to reinsurance cases to everything in-between, this always struck me as an odd proposition, because it ran contrary to the standard rule in the federal court system allowing a plaintiff to plead in the alternative, meaning that a plaintiff could allege multiple claims even if they were sufficiently inconsistent that, at the end of the day, the plaintiff could recover on only one of the claims. In Moyle, the Ninth Circuit, following the lead of an excellent analysis of the issue by the Eighth Circuit, found that, in light of the Supreme Court’s decision in Amara, a plaintiff could pursue denied benefits and equitable relief under ERISA in the same case. You can find what I hope is a cogent explanation of why, after Amara, it is clear that both such claims can be brought in the same action in this reply brief, which I recently filed in the First Circuit (the discussion begins at page 22 of the brief). The Ninth Circuit’s decision now reinforces the Eighth Circuit’s conclusion to this effect.

By the way, even aside from its significance to ERISA litigation, I took note of Moyle for a personal reason. In this profession of specialists – and I am one as well – people are often interested to find out that I have, over the years, maintained an active (sometimes more active, sometimes less active) intellectual property litigation practice, alongside my much larger ERISA practice. I have tried patent infringement cases, done more consumer product copyright infringement cases than I can count, and done a fair amount of software infringement litigation and counseling. It all goes back originally, though, to Golden Eagle Insurance Company, the once defunct California insurer whose employees are at the heart of the Moyle case. Through a client at Golden Eagle, I represented Golden Eagle’s California insureds in IP litigation from the Southern District of New York to Rhode Island and in Massachusetts (I don’t recall any of those cases going further north, and I know they didn’t go further south) starting in the 1990s, and my IP practice grew from there. Its funny to see these different sides of my practice come together in Moyle, with a major ERISA decision stemming from a client that was instrumental in building my IP practice.

The other case decided by the Ninth Circuit is less novel, but still important. In Rich v. Shrader, the Ninth Circuit held that a stock option program for officers was not subject to ERISA, because its intended purpose wasn’t to provide retirement income. Whether ERISA reaches particular stock grant or other compensation plans is often a hotly contested issue in disputes between companies and their former officers, and Rich is a fine example both of that circumstance, and of how to analyze whether ERISA is applicable. You can find an excellent summary of it in this Bloomberg BNA write up of the case.