Wow. Don’t think the heat is on for company 401(k) sponsors and other fiduciaries of employee retirement benefit plans who may not have done enough benchmarking and due diligence to make sure that mutual fund and advisor fees are as low as possible? Then take a look at this article out of the Washington Post
Fiduciaries
What Happens When Reimbursement of Overpaid Benefits Is Equitable for Purposes of ERISA, but Nonetheless Inequitable?
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Here is an interesting little twist on the common scenario of a plan overpaying retirement benefits and then seeking reimbursement, as allowed under the plan’s terms, of the overpayment from the plan beneficiary. Normally, these cases are focused on whether the reimbursement qualifies as equitable relief that the fiduciary is allowed to pursue. In this…
Fiduciary Advisors, Due Diligence, and Avoiding Fiduciary Liability
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Michael Pratico, a fiduciary advisor to retirement plans throughout New England for Captrust Financial Advisors, and one of my favorite touchstones for real world – i.e. non-lawyer – information about the actual operation of retirement benefit plans, pointed out an interesting conundrum to me the other day concerning the operations of retirement plans and…
When Is a Plan Administrator a Fiduciary?
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Posted in Fiduciaries
Here is a fascinating decision out of the federal district court for Rhode Island arising out of a dispute over plan contributions required of a contractor under collective bargaining agreements in the construction context. What I most liked about the case is its discussion of the challenge to the plaintiffs’ standing to bring an ERISA…
Insurance Brokers as ERISA Defendants
By Stephen Rosenberg on
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…
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…