Well now. The world’s leading private attorney general of ERISA fee enforcement has now instituted four coordinated lawsuits against the retirement plans of major universities (MIT, Yale, NYU and Duke, as of this writing). I haven’t read the complaints yet, and have only read the industry articles on it (I like this one, and this one, and this one).

Nonetheless, anyone who downplays these lawsuits right off the bat is making a mistake. As I have written on many occasions, no one thought much of excessive fee suits when the first ones were filed against major private industry plans, and there was even more skepticism when the first church plan actions were filed. Hundreds of millions of dollars of settlements later, no one is laughing at these theories of liability under ERISA anymore. Since those who forget history are condemned to repeat it, it would be a mistake not to see these suits as the opening of a new, and potentially very expensive, front in ERISA litigation. It will be very interesting to see how these actions play out.