Boston ERISA and Insurance Litigation Blog’s Top Ten Countdown for the New Year – The Fourth Most Popular Post of 2024
Some things are just evergreen when it comes to ERISA, a point that is driven home whenever, as now, I publish my top ten most read blog posts of the prior year. The Supreme Court just returned, for about the umpteenth time, to the subject of excessive fee class action litigation and the question
Boston ERISA and Insurance Litigation Blog’s Top Ten Countdown for the New Year – The Seventh Most Popular Post of 2024
Story after story keep telling the same story – that class action litigation against ERISA plan sponsors and fiduciaries is a growth industry. Encore Fiduciary’s Daniel Aronowitz and Karolina Jozwiak have a great, data rich piece out in Planadvisor documenting this fact, and the legal media world is all atwitter about the latest new way
Adding Private Equity Investment Options to 401(k) Plans May Be a Good Idea – for Everyone Who Is Not a Plan Participant or a Plan Fiduciary
There’s an old New Yorker cartoon that shows a grandfatherly man talking to a younger man in a library, and he says to him that “Those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it [while] those who do study history are doomed to stand by helplessly while everyone else repeats it.” Am I the
What Would a Reasonable Middle Ground on Allowing Excessive Fee Class Actions Look Like?
I wanted to pass along this advisory from Davis Wright Tremaine which argues for legislative action to, in essence, raise the bar that plaintiffs have to hurdle to prosecute an ERISA excessive fee class action. What I like most about it is the authors do not simply complain and ask for legislative intervention, but instead
Summary Judgment Proceedings in Breach of Fiduciary Duty Litigation: The Lessons of Sellers v. Boston College
I suspect every client I have ever represented in litigation can testify that I am overly fond of the old saying if you have the facts, argue the facts; if you have the law, argue the law; and if you have neither, jump up and down and scream. In my view, most of the time
Time to Polish Off an Old Chestnut and Put it Back Out on the Mantel: Fixing Retirement Readiness by Postponing the Age of Retirement
Many years ago, back when we were closer to the tipping point where 401(k) plans replaced pensions for the majority of employees, there was a great deal of discussion about whether employees could possibly be financially ready to retire at age 65 absent pensions. I argued at the time that the discussion was wrong and
Using ERISA Plans to Counter Economic Inequality
How are these two stories related? The first concerns a Nobel Prize winning economist’s proposition that the taxation and political structure of the United States plays a central role in the downward mobility of the American middle class, while the second concerns an investment fund that intends to purchase companies from their founders and eventually
Labor Shortage, the Return to the Office Dispute and Employee Benefits
This is an interesting story on Mintz Levin trying to bring more lawyers back into the office by figuring out the best way to get people, starting with the partners, to find it valuable to be there, rather than by threatening associates’ compensation or mandating certain work hours, as other firms have done. My
There Is a Time-Tested Way to Reduce Excessive Fee Litigation Against Plan Sponsors (Part II)
I didn’t intend to write a second post (here’s the first) on the ever rising tide of excessive fee litigation, but the LinkedIn algorithm, responding to my posting of my first blog post on this issue, hand delivered me another great graphic, this one by Sompo International, on the same topic. What I