The common law of ERISA is rife with odd decisions that likely made sense when issued, but, like opening Pandora’s box, led to unintended, unanticipated and arguably wrong rules of law when applied further down the road in additional cases. Heck, there are entire bodies of scholarship arguing that the very existence of a central
Deferred comp plans, or what to an ERISA lawyer is a top hat plan, have become widespread in recent years, used for a variety of purposes, from executive recruitment and retention to simply rewarding important executives at smaller employers who may lack other resources for doing so. But a story from the other day about
I am returning to an old chestnut on my blog, a section which went dormant to some degree over the years, namely the section on interviews. They take a little time to do well, and podcasts (with their reliance on guests) seemed to have swallowed the field, so I stopped focusing on them. However, both
This is a great story today from Lauren Clason at Bloomberg on litigation over claim denials in which AI was used to process the claims. There is a lot to be said about this issue, and I wish I had more time to write on it today. However, I have a brief due on Friday
I have written extensively on the relationship between insurance and climate change, going back to early comments and work on the subject by Lloyds‘, and continued to address it in the context of insurers withdrawing from markets in the face of climate related losses. I am known for saying that the insurance industry
Ouch, is all I could think to say after reading the First Circuit’s latest decision on ERISA preemption, Cannon v. Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Mass., in which a wrongful death action based on a benefit denial was deemed preempted. This is one of those tough outcomes that ERISA’s broad preemption provision sometimes
A recent discussion with a colleague in the insurance industry (who shall remain nameless so as to protect the innocent) caused me to crystalize some of my inchoate thinking on how current problems in ERISA class action litigation, including too many suits, too much defense spending, too much self-protective caution on the part of plan
I have an appeal pending at the First Circuit right now concerning the interpretation of top hat plans and, thus, with discretion being the better part of valor and all that, I am not going to write too much about this new top hat decision out of the Eighth Circuit. However, for anyone out there
As I have mentioned in the past, it seems to be taking an inordinate amount of time for me to get through my countdown of the top ten posts on my blog in 2024. Nonetheless, I have finally reached the end of this countdown, even if I am a little late across the
Because I really like lawyering, I am pleased that I have had a very busy and productive February, full of client meetings, filings in courts in various jurisdictions, and interesting work. The drawback, though, is that it is now almost the end of the second month of 2025 and I still haven’t finished my countdown