There’s an old New Yorker cartoon that shows a grandfatherly man talking to a younger man in a library, and he says to him that “Those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it [while] those who do study history are doomed to stand by helplessly while everyone else repeats it.” Am I the
I wanted to pass along this advisory from Davis Wright Tremaine which argues for legislative action to, in essence, raise the bar that plaintiffs have to hurdle to prosecute an ERISA excessive fee class action. What I like most about it is the authors do not simply complain and ask for legislative intervention, but instead
Growing up in Baltimore in the Seventies (you can take the boy out of Baltimore but you can’t take the Orioles out of the boy – go Birds!), I developed a love of horse racing, back in the heyday of Pimlico racetrack and the Preakness. I still remember watching Secretariat run the second leg of
I suspect every client I have ever represented in litigation can testify that I am overly fond of the old saying if you have the facts, argue the facts; if you have the law, argue the law; and if you have neither, jump up and down and scream. In my view, most of the time
Many years ago, back when we were closer to the tipping point where 401(k) plans replaced pensions for the majority of employees, there was a great deal of discussion about whether employees could possibly be financially ready to retire at age 65 absent pensions. I argued at the time that the discussion was wrong and
This is a great story in Plan Adviser on the past and future of ERISA litigation over 401(k) plans. It’s a fun and short read, neither of which is normally true of articles on this subject. That’s a little tongue in cheek, but that phenomenon is nobody’s fault: when I have written on the subject
The Supreme Court today hears argument in a case concerning many politicians’ and lawyers’ favorite pinata, the Chevron doctrine. It would likely be naïve to believe that the case won’t at least further restrain agency authority and discretion, although whether the case will be the vehicle for complete abrogation of the doctrine is
How are these two stories related? The first concerns a Nobel Prize winning economist’s proposition that the taxation and political structure of the United States plays a central role in the downward mobility of the American middle class, while the second concerns an investment fund that intends to purchase companies from their founders and eventually
When I recommended in a recent pair of blog posts that insurers and plan sponsors should make it a universal practice to try excessive fee class actions to conclusion, I wasn’t being flippant. I have probably spent 25,000 hours over the past thirty years advising insurers on when to try cases to conclusion – or
Legal tech and blogging expert Kevin O’Keefe, of LexBlog, has thrown himself and his company into generative AI. Kevin posted recently on the story of social media content creators being replaced by ChatGPT and asked about the eventual impact such technology will have on legal jobs. His post got me thinking about a