Honestly, I have spent a week scratching my head, off and on, over the Supreme Court granting cert to consider the standards governing when attorneys fees can be awarded in an ERISA case, particularly when they denied cert shortly thereafter in Hecker, which presented the opportunity to address the much more substantive issue
Fiduciaries
A Nice Explanation of the DOL Advisory Opinion on Target-Date Funds
By Stephen Rosenberg on
I like this (relatively) new blog here, the Benefits and Employment Observer, by the lawyers at the small – only in numbers – Washington D.C. shop of Bailey & Ehrenberg. This is the cleanest, most easily understood presentation of the findings of the DOL’s recent advisory opinion “addressing the issue of whether the…
Marx on 401(k) Litigation
By Stephen Rosenberg on
I have a stack of substantive ERISA matters that I have been trying to post on for the last week or two, and I am going to try to work through them over the next few weeks. The thing about a blog, though, is the world keeps on spinning, and each day you find something…
Three for Thursday
By Stephen Rosenberg on
I am going to catch up on a number of items I have meant to blog on this week, all in one fell swoop. So here goes:
• I posted before about my appearance in an article in the Boston Business Journal, but one that was only available on-line to subscribers. Here it is in…
On Fiduciary Liability Insurance
I have written before that one of the things that makes insurance coverage law interesting is the fact that almost every trend in liability or litigation eventually shows back up in insurance disputes, in a sort of fun house mirror sort of way. Whether it is corporate exposure for asbestos liabilities, or the sudden invention…
Hecker, Fees and A Broad Public Market
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Posted in 401(k) Plans, Fiduciaries
To me, intellectually, all roads lead to Hecker right now, as the sort of touchstone around which all thinking about fiduciary obligations and the amounts of fees charged in 401(k) plans must revolve. Hecker, of course, found not only that a broad range of offering meant that marketplace discipline guaranteed appropriate fees, but also…
Harmon on Delegation of Fiduciary Duties in the First Circuit
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Posted in ERISA Statutory Provisions, Fiduciaries
Just briefly, as I have been traveling and haven’t reviewed the case myself, Roy Harmon on his excellent Health Plan Law blog, analyzes a decision out of the First Circuit on the manner in which a fiduciary can properly delegate its authority; the decision found that excessive formality wasn’t mandated. You can find Roy’s analysis…
You Say Securities, I Say ERISA
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Posted in 401(k) Plans, Fiduciaries
I have to admit I have found the Workplace Prof blog tough sledding since the site’s founding blogger, Paul Secunda, took retirement from the site, apparently to spend more time in the snow in Wisconsin. Without Paul, the blog has trended heavily towards labor law and lacks the type of frequent, insightful commentary…
Excessive Fee Litigation and the Small Plan
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Posted in 401(k) Plans, Fiduciaries
It has become a given in any talk on 401(k) plans and fiduciary liability that I give these days – my comment that, when the market was always going up, up, up, no one cared that they might have made 15% instead of 14% but for some unresolved problem with a plan’s structure, but with…
More ERISA Blogging for Those of You Who Can’t Get Enough
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Posted in Fiduciaries
Kevin O’Keefe, the lawyer turned blogging evangelist behind the company that hosts this blog, told me when I was picking a topic for my blog that I should choose a subject where there was plentiful source material to work from on a day in, day out basis. They were oddly prophetic words, in that…