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
On Named and Functional Fiduciaries
I have been a fan of Scott Simon’s Morningstar articles on the various fiduciary relationships among those who run plans and those who advise them. This one here is a good, practical, business oriented view of the different forms of fiduciaries – named and functional (or deemed) – in 401(k) and other plans. It is
The Future After Hardt
Well, everybody and their mother’s lawyer has an article, blog post or client advisory memo out on the Hardt case, and I suspect that is because, frankly, its about as easy a Supreme Court decision to understand as you can find. What’s it hold? Procedural victory requiring remand of an ERISA denied benefit claim is
Hardt, A Unanimous Supreme Court, and the Perfect Example of Why Remand Is Enough of a Win to Support an Award of Attorneys’ Fees
I posted recently on the Supreme Court’s consideration in Hardt v. Reliance Standard Life Insurance of the question of just how much success on the merits is necessary to trigger a plan participant’s right to an award of attorneys’ fees, and discussed the fact that requiring an outright and complete win by the plan participant
What’s a Good ERISA Lawyer Worth, Anyway?
That’s what this case here begins to answer, at least in the Boston market and in the context of the fees that should be awarded to a prevailing plaintiff. This case was intended to be the next in the series of recent Massachusetts/First Circuit centric decisions I started writing two weeks ago, and haven’t returned