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
What Conkright v. Frommert Means
Well, I guess this wouldn’t be much of an ERISA blog if I didn’t put up a post about the Supreme Court’s decision in Conkright v. Frommert, on the question of whether an administrator continues to be entitled to deferential review when it has already had one interpretation of the challenged plan terms rejected
When Does a Flaw in an Administrative Appeal Render an Administrator’s Denial of Benefits Arbitrary and Capricious?
There have been a series of interesting ERISA decisions over the past several weeks out of the United States District Court for Massachusetts, whose Boston courthouse I can see through my office window as I type this post. The decisions have stacked up on my desk a little bit, like a leaning tower of paper.
An Employer’s Guide to Health Reform
I expect to be litigating, down the road, issues, complications and conundrums created by health care reform. Let’s be honest – its impossible to imagine any large structural undertaking not generating problems, including unforeseen ones, that will have to be resolved by the courts. For now, though, the issue is more one of planning for
Wednesday Potpourri
Over the past week or so, several interesting items have crossed my desk, none of which have appeared while I have had time to do them justice with a full blown post. We will do three for Wednesday today – even though there is no alliteration at all to that title, as opposed to five
Harris, Hecker, Excessive Fees and Marketplace Discipline
Yesterday, the Supreme Court effectively rejected the idea that mutual fund fees, in the non-ERISA context, are not actionable if consistent with the market as a whole, in response to a Seventh Circuit decision finding that a fund did not pay excessive fees to its investment advisor in light of marketplace discipline (I am oversimplifying
What Daubert Can Teach Us About Electronic Discovery Problems
I have written before, probably on more than one occasion, about the fundamental philosophical problem underlying electronic discovery, which is that lawyers and courts continue to view it through the traditional rubric of discovery, one formed in the world of paper documents, interrogatory answers, and deposition testimony. As I have discussed in the past, battles