I can’t even recall how many times I have written – on this blog and elsewhere – on what I call “defensive plan building,” which is the idea that plans should be designed, built out and operated with the risk of litigation and liability exposure carefully considered and planned for, with the goal of eliminating
Fiduciaries
Susan Mangiero on Tibble and the Complexity of Monitoring Plan Investments
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Posted in Fiduciaries
So, as I and dozens of other observers have pointed out (although I am confident I am the only one who quoted Shakespeare on the subject), the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Tibble drove home the importance of monitoring plan investments, as well as the fact that, dependent on the circumstances, the failure to…
What Would William Shakespeare Say About Tibble v. Edison?
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Posted in 401(k) Plans, Fiduciaries
Years ago I moved from reading fiction for fun to mostly reading non-fiction, not long after reading The Corrections and spending the whole time hearing, in style, tone and manner, echoes in the back of my head of writers as recent as Martin Amis, as old as Norman Mailer, and as somewhere in-between…
Should Company Officers Run Retirement and Other Benefit Plans?
By Stephen Rosenberg on
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…
Company Stock in Retirement Plans: Where Lies the Line Between Prudent and Imprudent Conduct?
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Chris Carosa at Fiduciary News highlighted this New York Times article in his twitter feed the other day, in which the author argued that there is no reason, from the point of view of a participant/employee, to hold large amounts of company stock in a retirement portfolio (as opposed to, say, as part of a …
What Does Teamsters Local 710 Pension Fund v. The Bank of N.Y. Mellon Corp. Tell Us About the Current Judicial Approach to Breach of Fiduciary Duty Cases?
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Posted in Fiduciaries
For many years, I argued on this blog that courts, when it came to ERISA breach of fiduciary duty cases, were too slow to decide cases on the facts and too quick to decide them on the basis of judicial assumptions or, worse yet, legal presumptions. I criticized this roundly in my article "Retreat …
Breach of Fiduciary Duty, Preemption and Liberal Pleading Rules
By Stephen Rosenberg on
I obtained dismissal of a breach of fiduciary duty claim, as well as state law claims, against my clients in an opinion filed on Friday. While long time readers know that I won’t comment substantively on rulings involving my clients, the opinion is worth a read on at least two substantive points involving breach of …
What Does Spano v. Boeing Foretell About the Future of Excessive Fee Litigation (and about the Future Ruling in Tibble As Well)?
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Tom Clark, who writes the excellent Fiduciary Matters Blog, gave me either a late Christmas or an early New Year’s present when he forwarded me, last week, the district court’s December 30th decision in Spano v. Boeing, which addressed numerous issues related to excessive fee litigation but, in particular, discussed the relationship of…
Three for Thursday
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Posted in Fiduciaries, Pensions
Well, some of you may recall that when I joined Twitter, I originally did it so that I would have an additional outlet to point out and comment on the various interesting articles and commentaries that cross my desk. Twitter, though, turned out to be a two way street, with it driving interesting articles …
Clearing Out the Attic of My Mind: Notes From ACI’s 8th National Forum on ERISA Litigation
With all due apologies to longtime Globe sports columnist Dan Shaugnessy, who would periodically “clean out his desk” by running a column of short bits he had collected, here’s a list, in no particular order, of interesting (to me, anyway) items I took away from ACI’s excellent 8th National Forum on ERISA Litigation in…