Roy Harmon, over at his Health Plan Law blog, has his typically scholarly take on two recent rulings out of the United States District Court for the District of New Hampshire in the case of Hopper v. Standard Insurance Company. The rulings primarily revolve around the question of which claims in the lawsuit
Fiduciaries
The Attorney-Client Privilege, ERISA and the Administrative Record
By Stephen Rosenberg on
No doubt at least some of you have noticed my fixation on the attorney-client privilege, and where its borders should be drawn when a party’s counsel plays a central role in the events that may or may not trigger insurance coverage or show bad faith. I have the same sort of cartographer’s obsession with…
The Effect of the Savings Rate on 401(k) Fee and Other Retirement Benefit Litigation
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Now here’s a curious little article from the New York Times on the question of whether mutual fund companies, including in their retirement calculators, deliberately overestimate the amount that people must save and invest to be able to afford to retire. The article notes that a number of respected economists find this to be the…
Supreme Court to Review Fiduciary Duties of Administrators
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Posted in Fiduciaries
One of the things that makes practicing in and blogging about ERISA interesting is the fact that the subject area is never static. Other areas of the law can literally evolve at a near glacial pace (see, for example, this post here, involving the law of malicious prosecution and a change, for the first…
Excessive Fees, ERISA and 401(k) Plans
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Posted in 401(k) Plans, Fiduciaries
Here is an excellent article, by way of workplace prof, on the fees charged in 401(k) plans, their impact on performance, and the difficulty of even learning about them. We have talked before about how challenges to excessive fees charged to 401(k) plans is the new growth stock in ERISA litigation, and many people…
Health Savings Accounts, Summary Plan Descriptions and Other Things
A few short notes of interest from a weekend of reading:
• Jerry Kalish has nice things to say about (and agrees with) my recent post concerning the Second Circuit’s decision – correct in my view – precluding summary plan descriptions from trumping the actual plan terms.
• I don’t know quite what to say…
More on 401(k) Fees and ERISA
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Posted in 401(k) Plans, Fiduciaries
For those of you readers who are interested in the issue of fiduciary liability for excessive 401(k) fees – and who isn’t? – here is more on the subject. I posted before about ways to avoid exposure to these types of claims, and Susan Mangiero has more on that topic here. Meanwhile, Workplace Prof has…
401(k) Plan Fees and Breaches of Fiduciary Duty
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Posted in 401(k) Plans, Fiduciaries
Some of you hopefully saw my recommendation the other day concerning this morning’s webinar on 401(k) plan fees and the attendant obligations of fiduciaries. The webinar discussed in detail the obligations of plan sponsors and other fiduciaries with regard to 401(k) plans and their accompanying fees. On the key issue of how to avoid incurring liability for breach of…
Investment Management Fees, and Contract Geeks
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Two things to chew on over the holiday, other than the turducken (I have always wanted to use that word in a sentence), one to know about before it occurs, the other to note before it disappears. I guess I could take that dichotomy a little further, and note that one concerns the first half…
Recoupments and Set Offs Under ERISA Plans
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Here’s a very interesting decision, Northcutt v. General Motors Hourly-Rate Employees Pension Plan, out of the 7th Circuit, upholding the right of administrators to rely on recoupment language in a plan to set off a lump sum social security payment received by a beneficiary against on-going payment obligations to that beneficiary that would otherwise…