The good people at Fiduciary News gave me a soapbox, and I was happy to climb up on it. They interviewed me as part of their series of monthly interviews on ERISA and related topics, and I discussed ERISA litigation and a wide range of related issues. You can find the “Exclusive Interview: ERISA Attorney
401(k) Plans
Defensive Plan Building, Otherwise Known as “Minimizing Legal Risks in the Design, Implementation and Administration of Employee Benefit Plans”
I can’t even recall how many times I have written – on this blog and elsewhere – on what I call “defensive plan building,” which is the idea that plans should be designed, built out and operated with the risk of litigation and liability exposure carefully considered and planned for, with the goal of eliminating…
Follow the Money: What Happens to the Proceeds of Class Action Settlements
By Stephen Rosenberg on
When you read in the paper about a large settlement in an excessive fee case or other claim involving a 401(k), ESOP or other ERISA governed plan, do you think about what happens next, and about how to distribute the money among the plan participants? I do, in cases where I have represented the class…
Seeking Shelter from the Storm: the Washington Post on Retirement Readiness
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Well, I am not sure how much new there is in this Washington Post article, “A Retirement Storm is Coming,” but I liked it nonetheless. It’s a good story on the problems in retirement financing people face and possible solutions. What I liked most about it are a few points. First of all…
Do You “Work For” Uber?
You know, the Uber decision out of the California Labor Commission is fascinating, even if it isn’t directly on point with the subject of this blog. It immediately brought me back to the first appeal brief I ever wrote, as a young associate, which concerned, at its heart, the question of whether the plaintiff was …
Déjà Vu All Over Again: Patenting Retirement Plan Features
By Stephen Rosenberg on
You know, you live long enough and you see everything come back around again. Ties get skinny, then they get wide. Standardized testing is seen as the key to everything, then as evil incarnate, then as the key to everything again. Baseball is learning to again look at the quality of the player on the…
What Would William Shakespeare Say About Tibble v. Edison?
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Posted in 401(k) Plans, Fiduciaries
Years ago I moved from reading fiction for fun to mostly reading non-fiction, not long after reading The Corrections and spending the whole time hearing, in style, tone and manner, echoes in the back of my head of writers as recent as Martin Amis, as old as Norman Mailer, and as somewhere in-between…
Initial Thoughts on the Supreme Court’s Opinion in Tibble v. Edison
By Stephen Rosenberg on
So what does it mean if you are an ERISA litigator who writes a blog and you are too busy litigating to write a post on Tibble v. Edison (even though you have published a widely read article on the case) right after the Supreme Court issues its opinion on the case? I don’t know…
Should Company Officers Run Retirement and Other Benefit Plans?
By Stephen Rosenberg on
This is great – I loved the idea of this Bloomberg BNA webinar the minute it popped up in my in-box, just from the title: “Just Say No: Why Directors Should Avoid Duties That Will Subject Them to ERISA.” I have written extensively on the idea of accidental fiduciaries, and the manner in…
Company Stock in Retirement Plans: Where Lies the Line Between Prudent and Imprudent Conduct?
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Chris Carosa at Fiduciary News highlighted this New York Times article in his twitter feed the other day, in which the author argued that there is no reason, from the point of view of a participant/employee, to hold large amounts of company stock in a retirement portfolio (as opposed to, say, as part of a …