Well, given the title of this blog, I couldn’t exactly let this decision pass unnoticed. In this decision from the Court of Appeals of New York, Federal Insurance Company v. IBM, the Court denied insurance coverage for IBM under an excess fiduciary liability (apparently) policy, for a settlement by IBM of a claim that
Fiduciaries
The ERISA Decision of the Year?
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Posted in ERISA Statutory Provisions, Fiduciaries
If you were going to read just one ERISA decision this year – or were starting from scratch, with a blank slate, and wanted to know the law governing breach of fiduciary duty claims under ERISA – I would read this one, Judge Holwell of the Southern District of New York’s opinion in Prudential Retirement …
What Vanity Fair Teaches About Fiduciary Obligations
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Posted in Fiduciaries
Not to be too flippant or cynical, but whenever, over the years, I have heard an economist base a nice, highly logical, elegantly structured analysis on the underlying base assumption that investors or business people or consumers are acting rationally – without accounting for the likelihood that they won’t actually do that – I understand…
The Devil is in the Details: Failure to Provide Forms Can Be a Fiduciary Breach
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Posted in Fiduciaries
Citigroup, McGraw-Hill, and Moench
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Posted in 401(k) Plans, Fiduciaries
Not unexpectedly, the Second Circuit has just adopted the Moench presumption, in this ruling here and this one here involving stock drop cases. For those with less time on your hands, here is an excellent news media summary of these stock drop rulings out of the Second Circuit yesterday. I have long posited that, given…
Defensive Plan Building After Loomis
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Posted in 401(k) Plans, Fiduciaries
Many of you may remember the race among law firms, after the trial court ruling in Tibble, to issue client alerts advising plan sponsors to make sure they were not holding retail share classes in their 401(k) plan investment options. Now, of course, we have the Seventh Circuit holding that it is just plain…
Loomis, Hecker, Tibble and the Evolution of Excessive Fee Claims
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Posted in 401(k) Plans, Fiduciaries
Well, well, well. Here is the story – well-presented by two lawyers from Williams Mullen – of the Seventh Circuit deciding this month, in the case of Loomis v Exelon Corporation, that holding retail class mutual fund shares, rather than cheaper institutional share classes, in a defined contribution plan was not sufficient to establish…
Retreat From the High Water Mark: Excessive Fee Litigation After Tibble
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Posted in 401(k) Plans, Fiduciaries
By the way, I never did make available a full copy of the article I referenced in this blog post here, which I wrote for the Spring 2011 edition of the Journal of Pension Benefits. The article analyzes excessive fee litigation in light of the trial rulings in Tibble, against the backdrop of…
The Lessons of Unisys
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Here is a very nicely written opinion out of the Third Circuit in Renfro v Unisys rejecting a breach of fiduciary duty claim alleging excessive fees in the mutual fund options in a company’s 401(k) plan. A few particular points are noteworthy. The first is the detailed explanation in the opinion of the reason that…
Talking About Fees
Summer time and the living is easy. Well no, not really – which is fine, because nothing makes a lawyer (at least this lawyer) more nervous than having time on his hands. Time demands have, though, cut down on my posting since the 4th. Still, I have had time over the past few weeks to…