Here is a neat post about the latest skirmish over state or local attempts to mandate health benefits and whether doing so is preempted by ERISA, this time in San Francisco, where an organization representing restaurant owners is challenging a city ordinance mandating the provision of health benefits. This is echoes of the Maryland Fair
Recoupments and Set Offs Under ERISA Plans
Here’s a very interesting decision, Northcutt v. General Motors Hourly-Rate Employees Pension Plan, out of the 7th Circuit, upholding the right of administrators to rely on recoupment language in a plan to set off a lump sum social security payment received by a beneficiary against on-going payment obligations to that beneficiary that would otherwise
The Attorney-Client Privilege in Insurance Coverage and Bad Faith Lawsuits
Like all of you, I am sure, I receive almost daily pitches in my in-box for seminars, podcasts, books and publications that promise to educate me on various topics that the pitchers have decided I must be interested in. Of course, these may be the same marketing wizards who send me twenty pitches a day
Viruses, Asbestos and Exclusions
I am fascinated by this new exclusion that is being drafted and for which approval is being sought, which seeks to exclude claims arising from viruses – not the computer kind, but things like avian flu. I understand the intent, but for any of you who, like I, have been at the insurance coverage business
Insurance Fraud and Securities Litigation
I don’t think I can recommend a better read for a Friday afternoon than this article on the apparently questionable rise and apparently imminent fall of the securities litigation powerhouse Milberg Weiss. You couldn’t make this stuff up, and I don’t think John Grisham or anyone else could have invented the panoply of players, and
Employee Welfare Benefit Plans and the Small Employer
Preemption is a tough defense to get around, particularly in the First Circuit, where it is taken quite seriously and numerous decisions expressly declare particular state law causes of action to be preempted by ERISA. One clever response to this problem, at least when the facts will allow the argument, is to try to sidestep
Claims Adjusters: Long Hours but No Overtime
Well, for those of you readers who work inside of the industry, instead of for it or agin’ it, I guess we can put this in the category of news you can use (I guess good news if you are in management, bad news if you aren’t). The Ninth Circuit has concluded, reversing the District
Insurance Coverage Trial Exhibits
I added a new category today, Insurance Coverage Trials, as a place to collect useful tips, ideas and articles on trying insurance coverage cases that might be useful to readers of this blog who either try such cases or hire (and thereafter manage) lawyers who try such cases. What prompted this idea was a long
401(k) Plans and Pensions: Are They Enough?
I wanted to pass along today a fascinating law review article by one of the better ERISA scholars, Susan Stabile, on the retirement benefit system. In the article, “Is It Time to Admit the Failure of an Employer-Based Pension System,” to be published in the Lewis & Clark Law Review, Professor Stabile raises
MassMutual Arbitration Award
Here is the story of the $50 million payday that the fired chief executive of MassMutual Financial Group has been awarded in an arbitration. There are a lot of lessons here, and maybe the first one is that in some instances it may just be better to be wrongly fired than rightly employed. Of course