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
It’s interesting. I spoke in my last post about the possibility of using ERISA and employee benefits to alter the course of economic inequality, referencing that pensions might be a better choice to accomplish that but they aren’t coming back. If they are, even in just isolated circumstances, it will be as a result of
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
This is an interesting story on Mintz Levin trying to bring more lawyers back into the office by figuring out the best way to get people, starting with the partners, to find it valuable to be there, rather than by threatening associates’ compensation or mandating certain work hours, as other firms have done. My
I didn’t intend to write a second post (here’s the first) on the ever rising tide of excessive fee litigation, but the LinkedIn algorithm, responding to my posting of my first blog post on this issue, hand delivered me another great graphic, this one by Sompo International, on the same topic. What I
This is a great and well-illustrated presentation by Chubb on the history of excessive fee litigation against sponsors of defined contribution retirement plans, on the pace of filings, on the types and sizes of plans that are being sued and on settlements of those claims. What you can see in the data is something that
On the Fid Guru Blog, Euclid Fiduciary’s Daniel Aronowitz has an excellent deep dive on the question of jury trials in breach of fiduciary duty litigation under ERISA, asking the questions of, first, whether they are really coming and, two, if so, is that a good or a bad thing (his take clearly appears to
Albert Feuer, who writes frequently on the technical aspects of ERISA compliance, has published an interesting new article in Bloomberg Tax’s Tax Management Compensation Planning Journal on the latest proposed legislation to alter retirement savings. Albert points out that the changes would help in allowing employees to increase their retirement savings, but would fail
I had another conversation yesterday with a financial advisor about bitcoin and crypto in 401(k) plans, a subject on which I have written skeptically in the past. As I am wont to do, I again questioned whether the hunger to add crypto to defined contribution plans is in employees’ best interest, or whether instead
I am quoted in an excellent article in Pensions & Investments by Robert Steyer on the use of independent fiduciaries when providing employer stock in company retirement plans. As many of you probably know, the Supreme Court’s decision a few years back in Fifth Third Bancorp vs. Dudenhoeffer raised the pleading bar substantially for plaintiffs