A recent discussion with a colleague in the insurance industry (who shall remain nameless so as to protect the innocent) caused me to crystalize some of my inchoate thinking on how current problems in ERISA class action litigation, including too many suits, too much defense spending, too much self-protective caution on the part of plan
Because I really like lawyering, I am pleased that I have had a very busy and productive February, full of client meetings, filings in courts in various jurisdictions, and interesting work. The drawback, though, is that it is now almost the end of the second month of 2025 and I still haven’t finished my countdown
There is a great article today in the Wall Street Journal on the adoption of 401(k) plans by smaller companies, noting that this phenomenon is driven by both legislative and labor market developments, and crediting these changes with pushing employee participation in 401(k) plans to half of the labor force. All good news, but there
Some things are just evergreen when it comes to ERISA, a point that is driven home whenever, as now, I publish my top ten most read blog posts of the prior year. The Supreme Court just returned, for about the umpteenth time, to the subject of excessive fee class action litigation and the question
This is a really good day to be returning to my countdown of the top ten most read blog posts of 2024, because just yesterday, the Supreme Court returned to a central issue in ERISA class action and excessive fee litigation: namely, what are the pleading standards and how can they be used
Story after story keep telling the same story – that class action litigation against ERISA plan sponsors and fiduciaries is a growth industry. Encore Fiduciary’s Daniel Aronowitz and Karolina Jozwiak have a great, data rich piece out in Planadvisor documenting this fact, and the legal media world is all atwitter about the latest new way
It’s interesting. Blog posts have “legs” (you should get the intentional pun in a minute) for all sorts of reasons, and it can be hard to figure out why in any particular case. With regard to my eighth most popular blog post of 2024, it might have been the great picture of horses
Continuing with my countdown of my top ten most read blog posts of 2024 – as chosen by you, the reader! – leads me today to one of my favorite topics, namely the increasing targeting of small (relatively speaking) ERISA plans by class action firms bringing suits alleging that the plans were too expensive. In
So two stories today give me a soapbox to address one aspect of ERISA class action litigation and the push back from plan sponsors and their fiduciary liability insurers against the costs imposed on them by this line of litigation. One story, which to protect the innocent I won’t otherwise identify, involves court approval of