DYLAN D. RUDOLPH and JOSEPH C. FAUCHER, August 10, 2023 On August 4, 2023, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals revived a lawsuit against AT&T Services Inc. and its retirement plan fiduciaries (together, “AT&T”), reversing a district court’s order granting summary judgment in AT&T’s favor. This decision, which is published and binding on cases located […]
ERISA Litigation
JOSEPH C. FAUCHER and BRIAN D. MURRAY, November 10, 2022 In the wake of the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Org., which overturned Roe v. Wade and its progeny, many states have passed, or are in the process of passing, laws that severely restrict abortion services. Assuming no federal legislation […]
DYLAN RUDOLPH and JOSEPH FAUCHER, September 29, 2022 Over the past several weeks, a single law firm, Miller Shah, LLP, has filed nearly a dozen lawsuits against fiduciaries of defined contribution plans that offer the BlackRock LifePath Index target date funds (“BlackRock Funds”). The cases represent a shift in approach relative to earlier waves of […]
DYLAN RUDOLPH and CLARISSA KANG, April 21, 2022 In a rather surprising move, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued two short decisions within the span of a week, which reversed lower court dismissals in 401(k) fee cases brought against Salesforce.com, Inc. and Trader Joe’s Company. A motion to dismiss challenges the quality of a […]
ANGEL L. GARRETT and CATHERINE L. REAGAN, February 4, 2022 With 401(k) plan excessive fee litigation sweeping the nation, the wait is finally over: The Supreme Court has issued a decision which plan fiduciaries anticipated might revolutionize excessive fee case pleading standards — Hughes v. Northwestern University.1 On January 24, 2022, the Supreme Court held […]
DYLAN D. RUDOLPH and ROBERT R. GOWER, July, 2021 The uptick in lawsuits now commonly referred to as “excessive fee” fiduciary breach litigation began on September 11, 2006, when a St. Louis firm, Schlichter Bogard & Denton, filed its initial tranche of lawsuits against the fiduciaries of multiple large corporate 401(k) plans. In the fifteen […]
NICOLAS DEGUINES and R. BRADFORD HUSS, June, 2021 The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in the recent case of In re Becker, No. 20-72805, 2021 WL 1219745 (9th Cir. Apr. 1, 2021), upheld the use of forum selection clauses in Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) governed plans as […]
CATHERINE REAGAN and R. BRADFORD HUSS, April 29, 2021 In an emerging theory of liability, plan fiduciaries’ treatment of participants’ personal data is coming under scrutiny. Over the last five years, we have seen how the collection of many individuals’ personal data can become a valuable asset in the right hands — whether it’s used […]
CLARISSA A. KANG, November 24, 2020 One of the cases heard by eight justices of the Supreme Court (after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and before Justice Amy Coney Barrett was appointed and sworn in), Rutledge v. Pharmaceutical Care Management Association involves the question of whether ERISA preempts or supersedes an Arkansas state law governing […]
ANGEL L. GARRETT, August 27, 2020 A recent decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reminds plan fiduciaries once again of the importance of including claims and appeals procedures and administrative exhaustion language in their plans. See Wallace v. Oakwood Healthcare, Inc., 954 F.3d 879 (6th Cir. 2020). Often, plan fiduciaries […]
JOSEPH C. FAUCHER and BRIAN D. MURRAY, June 8, 2020 On June 1, 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in Thole v. U.S. Bank, N.A., 2020 WL 2814294 (2020). The majority opinion — written by Justice Kavanaugh — is likely to have a significant impact on ERISA litigation involving defined benefit plans. While […]
JOSEPH C. FAUCHER and BRIAN D. MURRAY, February, 2020 401(k) plan sponsors routinely offer stable value funds as conservative investment alternatives for their participants. Insurance companies that manage stable value funds invest in fixed income instruments, such as short- and intermediate-term government and corporate bonds and mortgage-backed securities. The funds are insured, so investors […]
JOSEPH C. FAUCHER and DYLAN D. RUDOLPH, January 27, 2020 For many years, courts have wrestled with the standards that apply to a fiduciary’s decision to offer stock of the sponsor company as an investment option in the company’s 401(k) plan. The struggle arose from two arguably contradictory provisions in ERISA. One provision encouraged […]
CLARISSA A. KANG, September, 2019 Last month, the Ninth Circuit held in favor of retirement plan fiduciaries to require arbitration of a participant’s claims for breach of fiduciary duty on an individual basis, rather than on a class action basis. Dorman v. Charles Schwab Corp., — F.3d –, 2019 WL 3926990 (9th Cir. 2019). In […]
ANGEL L. GARRETT and BRYAN J. CARD, August, 2019 A new wave of putative class-action lawsuits filed under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) has emerged onto the scene alleging that companies are using outdated mortality tables from the 1970s and 1980s in calculating alternative forms of benefits under defined benefit […]
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