All right now, its time to get back up on the horse – the blogging horse, that is. I didn’t actually go on vacation for the last month, believe it or not – I had a major brief concerning a piercing the corporate veil case against a corporate officer due not long after the July
Back to the Future: Insurance Coverage Law from Asbestos to Cyber Risks
This is a very fun – if you can use that word for insurance disputes – discussion of the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court determining what trigger applies under insurance policies issued to insureds sued for asbestos related injuries. Its partly fun because it replays a highly contentious and, for all involved, expensive chapter in American legal history
Litigating Executive Compensation Disputes
Is there a more hot button topic in the world, just as a general principle, than compensation, especially of the executive kind? From Salary.com to the outrage of politicians over financial industry pay, the subject is never far from your internet browser. In fact, just for amusement’s sake, I just googled executive compensation, and the
Ask Not for Whom the Bell Tolls
This is an interesting story on a number of levels, about the GM pension plan, its size, GM’s efforts to reduce the size of its liabilities, and the company’s decision to transfer administration and future costs to a certain extent to a large insurer. GM and its pension plan have continued to be one of
A Bunch of Cliches About Scary Things (Or a Few Words on Why Fee Disclosure Isn’t Scary)
Here’s a very nice piece on fee disclosure, as mandated by the Department of Labor, and the idea that it is to everyone’s benefit. I have long maintained that fee disclosure of the type at issue falls squarely in the ballpark of the old saying that sunshine is the best disinfectant, and that
Trust But Verify: The Importance of Private Attorney Generals to Plan Governance
Here is a neat little story that illustrates a bigger point. The article describes the resolution of a Department of Labor lawsuit brought against a small company to recover approximately $100,000 of participant holdings in a profit sharing plan that was diverted to other uses. Its own moral is clear – plan sponsors need to
Plan Administrators and the Risk of Personal Liability: A Primer
Often when I chat with middle and upper level managers of mid-size and larger companies who have been assigned the job of administering their employer’s 401(k), ESOP or other benefit plans, I wonder if they are fully cognizant of the risks of personal liability they are taking on, and whether they have made sure that
Lanfear, Home Depot and Moench
If you like an extended metaphor – and anyone who has read this blog for awhile knows I do – you should enjoy the Eleventh Circuit’s decision this week in Lanfear v Home Depot, adopting the Moench presumption and explaining exactly how it is to be applied in that circuit. What’s a better analogy
The IRS – A Safe Port in a Storm for Plan Fiduciaries (Sometimes, Anyway)
Well, as if there weren’t enough barriers to successfully prosecuting breach of fiduciary duty actions under ERISA, it turns out that you also can’t do it if the fiduciary’s errors consisted of wrongfully withholding benefits and turning them over to the IRS as tax payments. A participant, according to this opinion fresh off the presses
From Webster To Seau and the Impact of More Medical Research on Repetitive Head Trauma in Football
I spent some time thinking about whether to even post on this subject today, not wanting to feel on any level that I might be either rushing to judgment too quickly, or even worse, exploiting a tragedy in any way to make a point. But the suicide of retired football star Junior Seau perfectly captures