I thought I would pass on two interesting insurance coverage stories, with some thoughts on each. The first is this one here, about the New Jersey Supreme Court finding that an insurer that loses an insurance coverage action can be ordered to pay attorney’s fees incurred by the insured in a separate but related
Pay Now and Later: High Plan Fees Pose an Increasing Risk of Fiduciary Exposure
Chip, chip, chip. No, that’s not the sound of the polar ice caps shedding ice, although I suppose it could well be. It’s the sound of the Fortress Europa that some of the more optimistic lawyers for 401(k) plans thought was being enacted against excessive fee claims – in the wake of cases such
Breach of Fiduciary Duty Litigation: When the Best Defense is a Good Offense
Anyone who writes anything for a long time, as I have this blog, cannot help but end up with certain recurring themes. When it comes to the management of 401(k) and similar plans, one of those themes has been the importance of compliance and a careful decision making process by fiduciaries, an idea borne out
Small Plans Don’t Always Have Small Problems
This is an interesting small piece out of Reish and Reicher highlighting the fact that smaller plans, with relatively small asset pools, face many of the same risks and problems that are faced by the large plan sponsors involved in the bold face cases that show up on a daily basis in the media. To
Could the Deepwater Horizon Alter the Trajectory of ERISA Stock Drop Litigation?
BP has a giant employee savings plan, making it a prime target for stock drop type ERISA breach of fiduciary duty claims in light of the Deepwater Horizon leak, as I mentioned here in this post, and the lawsuits and the investigations that will eventually result in lawsuits are coming out of the woodwork
Statute of Limitations and Denial of Benefit Claims
Here is an excellent and very educational post that I wanted to pass along from the Florida Insurance Blog on the statute of limitations applicable to denied benefit claims under ERISA. It is an issue that is often not as straightforward as it either appears or should be, as the Ninth Circuit case addressed in the
The Envelope, Please . . .
Funny that I referenced the Oscar Awards the other day in a post, as I just found out this blog has been nominated as a top insurance blog by LexisNexis. You know how all the Oscar nominees who don’t win always say its an honor just to be nominated? I never believe them
Can the Deepwater Horizon Spill Sink the Fiduciaries of BP’s 401(k) Plan as Well?
Well, someone thinks so. You can count me, though, as monstrously skeptical that you could tag the fiduciaries of the BP 401(k) plan with breach of fiduciary duty for overexposure to company stock because they failed to expect the Deepwater Horizon explosion and account for it by greater diversification. On the other hand are
ERISA Preemption: Depends on What You Mean by the Word Relate
I really, really like this opinion, to paraphrase Sally Field’s perhaps most famous line (or perhaps not, since she never actually said it.) I like it because it deals really well, and out of a highly respected court, with a question that often bedevils not just courts, but also lawyers trying to determine the scope
The Attorney-Client Privilege in Insurance Litigation
My in-box, like most of you I assume, is inundated on a day in, day out basis with offers of webinars, seminars, and the like on every topic under the sun that the sponsors think I might even conceivably have any interest in or professional connection to. Most I ignore without even opening, as not