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
Employee Benefit Plans
Church Plan Litigation and My New Article On It
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Posted in Employee Benefit Plans, ERISA Statutory Provisions
When courts first started tackling the new wave of suits challenging the church plan status of certain health care entities, I thought it an amusing curiosity, at best. I did grasp, however, the impetus from the perspective of the class action bar, which is that, if able to overturn the claimed exemptions of the defendants…
Real Knowledge, Fake Knowledge, and the Duty to Inquire: Time Limitations in ERISA Litigation
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Posted in Employee Benefit Plans
As a brief aside, while I continue to work on my promised blog post on the causation/damages aspect of fiduciary duty litigation in light of the Fourth Circuit’s recent and controversial opinion on the issue in Tatum, I thought I would pass along that my most recent article in the Journal of Pension Benefits…
Tatum v. RJR Pension Investment Committee: What it Teaches About Fiduciary Obligations
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Somehow, RJR Nabisco has always been fascinating, from beginning to now. There must be something about combining tobacco and Oreos that gets the imagination flowing; maybe its the combination of the country’s most regulated consumer product with the wonders of possibly the world’s favorite cookie. Heck, its birth even birthed a book and then, in…
Changing Firms, and a Brief Note on the Right of Service Providers to Make a Profit
By Stephen Rosenberg on
So, some of you may have noticed a change on the masthead at the top of this blog, which notes that I am now at the Wagner Law Group , in its Boston office. It has been a pleasure litigating ERISA and business disputes for the past nearly quarter century at the McCormack Firm, but…
More on the Golf Course RFP
Susan Mangiero, one of my favorite experts on financial deals and transactions, was kind enough to post on my presentation to the Boston Regional Office of the Department of Labor, where I spoke on common mistakes by plan sponsors. I spoke as part of a day long training program that Susan presented at as…
Excessive Fee Litigation Remains a Hot Topic
By Stephen Rosenberg on
There’s a nice overview from Bloomberg BNA on plan fee litigation, and its status in the courts at this point in time. The article opens up by setting the stage:
Plan fee litigation had a big year in 2013, with divisive appellate court decisions affecting standards of judicial review, statutes of limitations and functional fiduciary
…
The Fiduciary Exception to the Attorney-Client Privilege: What It Is and Why It Matters
One of the great advantages a Massachusetts ERISA litigator has is that our federal magistrate judges are very good with ERISA issues, which is something that is well illustrated by this decision on the scope of the fiduciary exception to the attorney-client privilege in ERISA litigation. In Kenney v. State Street, the magistrate judge…
Why Amara’s Expansion of Remedies Matters Now, But Not So Much in the Long Term
My small group of dedicated twitter followers know I was live tweeting last week from ACI’s ERISA Litigation conference in New York, at least for the first day of the conference. Tweeting allowed me to pass along ideas from the speakers and my own thoughts on their points in real time, which was, frankly, a…
Opening Up the Courthouse Door: The Second Circuit Weighs in on Exhaustion of Administrative Remedies
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Posted in Benefit Litigation, Employee Benefit Plans
If one theme has emerged from my numerous blog posts over the last seven years and across the various articles I have written on ERISA litigation during that time span, it is the centrality of operational competence in sponsoring and administering ERISA plans. I have, for instance, often argued that, when it comes to ERISA…