Well, the world of ERISA preemption, without Maryland’s Wal-Mart law to focus on anymore, turns its lonely eyes to Massachusetts’ universal health insurance statute, with the Boston Business Journal posting a front page article this week that says, in essence, it might be preempted but then again, maybe not.
Whether or not this statute is…
Maryland has given up the fight over its Wal-Mart bill, which essentially targeted Wal-Mart and tried to force it to increase the health care benefits provided to its employees; as many of you will recall, the Fourth Circuit and the district court both found the act to be preempted by ERISA. Most commentators, including this…
The district courts in the First Circuit have been so busy issuing ERISA related decisions recently that it has become difficult to find time to post on other things that I also want to talk about. That said, however, the District Court for the District of Maine just issued a remarkable opinion that I both…
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…
Recently, waiting for a pretrial conference in federal court on one of my cases, I listened as a judge explained to the lawyers in a different case, based on only knowing the causes of action, what the actual facts of the case before him must be, even though he had never heard from the parties before. He…
It is likely that if you are interested in the subject of this blog you already know that the Fourth Circuit has now affirmed the District Court decision striking down Maryland’s Fair Share Act. Workplace prof has a nice post summing up the issue here, and major media accounts can be found here and here. …
Here is a neat post about the latest skirmish over state or local attempts to mandate health benefits and whether doing so is preempted by ERISA, this time in San Francisco, where an organization representing restaurant owners is challenging a city ordinance mandating the provision of health benefits. This is echoes of the Maryland Fair…
Preemption is a tough defense to get around, particularly in the First Circuit, where it is taken quite seriously and numerous decisions expressly declare particular state law causes of action to be preempted by ERISA. One clever response to this problem, at least when the facts will allow the argument, is to try to sidestep…
The First Circuit released its most recent ERISA decision, Carrasquillo v. Pharmacia Corp., a few days ago. Of interest in the decision, the court notes the standards that the appellate court should apply in reviewing a district court’s entry of summary judgment when the arbitrary and capricious standard applies. The court reiterated that while…
Well, this is interesting. Here is a forthcoming law review article from Ed Zelinsky of Cardozo on the Maryland Fair Share Act, Wal-Mart and preemption, issues I talked about here and here. As the abstract shows, the professor concludes that a federal district court correctly held that Maryland’s statute targeting Wal-Mart’s health insurance program…
