I was pleased to read this article in Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, as well as the recent Supreme Judicial Court decision it references. For several years, I have been arguing that in insurance coverage disputes involving sophisticated insureds, Massachusetts courts are moving away from their historic reliance on pro-insured maxims in deciding coverage disputes in favor
I enjoyed this article from Middle Market Growth on the intersection of private equity investing and ESOPs. As the article points out, most people think of ESOPs as fully employee owned enterprises, but in fact there are partially employee owned companies where there is room for private equity investments elsewhere in the ownership structure and
One of the advantages of writing a blog on a particular subject for as long as I have – going on 17 years now – is that you become your own sort of institutional memory, in a way. When I saw this article in Forbes today, discussing barriers that the NFL’s disability system throws up
There is an excellent article in Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly this week by Eric Berkman on a new District Court decision by Judge Woodlock in Massachusetts concerning mental health benefits and the nature of the review provided by an insurer. The decision, K.D. v. Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare, found that the insurer had an insufficient basis
I attended a large legal conference (DRI’s Insurance Coverage and Practice Symposium) in person last week for the first time since the pandemic, and not only learned a lot, but had a great time (shout out in particular to the kitchen staff at Capital Grill and props to the bartender at the Whitby
Albert Feuer, who writes frequently on the technical aspects of ERISA compliance, has published an interesting new article in Bloomberg Tax’s Tax Management Compensation Planning Journal on the latest proposed legislation to alter retirement savings. Albert points out that the changes would help in allowing employees to increase their retirement savings, but would fail
I had another conversation yesterday with a financial advisor about bitcoin and crypto in 401(k) plans, a subject on which I have written skeptically in the past. As I am wont to do, I again questioned whether the hunger to add crypto to defined contribution plans is in employees’ best interest, or whether instead
Attorney fee awards under ERISA loom larger in the imagination of lawyers and, to the extent they note it at all, the public than they do in the real world. It’s likely due to the outsize coverage that the occasional very large fee award, usually entered as part of a class action settlement, receives in
So there is an interesting article in Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly on the rise of so-called “nuclear” verdicts in Massachusetts, or in other words, what we used to just call – with much less hyperbole – runaway jury verdicts. (By the way, can we do away with the marketing campaign to label large verdicts nuclear; runaway
I am quoted in an excellent article in Pensions & Investments by Robert Steyer on the use of independent fiduciaries when providing employer stock in company retirement plans. As many of you probably know, the Supreme Court’s decision a few years back in Fifth Third Bancorp vs. Dudenhoeffer raised the pleading bar substantially for plaintiffs