Justia ERISA Opinion Summaries

Pension funds regulated by the Multiemployer Pension Plan Amendments Act, part of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), sued to collect shortfalls in contributions for 2003-2008 from System Parking, under four collective bargaining agreements with the union. The Seventh Circuit affirmed a judgment of $2,000,000, after concluding that it had authority to change the name on the judgment. The funds’ complaint and the judgment named, as defendant, the “L&R Group of Companies,” which is not a recognized business entity, organization, partnership, or trust; Fed. R. Civ. P. 17(a) states that suits must be conducted in the name of the real parties in interest. Rule 17(b) says that only persons or entities with the capacity to sue or be sued may be litigants. A “description” is not a juridical entity. System Parking’s assets were acquired by an entity not named in the complaint or served with process, so a motion to dismiss would have been granted, had the parties or the court been “paying attention.” With respect to the merits, the court upheld a finding that the employer’s audit was unreliable, having been prepared in-house, by a person without relevant experience, rather than by an independent accounting firm and being based on “murky” assumptions. View "Teamsters Local Union No. 727 v. L&R Group of Companies" on Justia Law

Plan beneficiaries (Plaintiffs) filed claims against their employer and its benefits plan administrator (collectively, Defendants) alleging breach of fiduciary duty in the selection and retention of certain mutual funds for a benefit plan governed by ERISA. The district court concluded that Plaintiffs' claims regarding the selection of mutual funds in 1999 were time-barred under the six-year limit of 29 U.S.C. 1113(1). The court of appeals affirmed. The Supreme Court vacated the decision of the court of appeals, holding that federal law imposes on fiduciaries an ongoing duty to monitor investments even absent a change in circumstances. On remand, the Fourth Circuit vacated the district court’s decisions regarding funds added to the ERISA plan before 2001, holding (1) Plaintiffs did not forfeit the ongoing-duty-to-monitor argument either in the district court or on appeal; (2) only a “breach of violation” need occur within the six-year statutory period, and the initial investment need not be made within the statutory period; and (3) the duty of prudence required Defendants to reevaluate investments periodically and to take into account their power to obtain favorable investment products. Remanded. View "Tibble v. Edison International" on Justia Law

While working at a subsidiary of General Dynamics Corporation (GDC), Plaintiff participated in GDC’s long-term disability (LTD) plan, which was funded and administered by Aetna Life Insurance Company. Plaintiff became disabled in 2003 and applied for plan benefits. Aetna approved her claim until 2010, when it began offsetting Plaintiff’s monthly LTD benefits by her gross Social Security income. Plaintiff sued Aetna and GDC, alleging that Aetna breached its fiduciary duty and seeking a declaration that her past and future LTD benefits should be offset against the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) benefits she was awarded minus any income taxes she was assessed on those benefits. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of Defendants, thus affirming Aetna’s interpretation of the plan’s offset provision. The First Circuit affirmed, holding (1) the plan permits Aetna to offset LTD benefits by the gross amount of SSDI benefits; and (2) the district court did not err in denying discovery. View "Troiano v. Aetna Life Insurance Co." on Justia Law

Plaintiffs, trustees of an Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), 29 U.S.C. 1001 et seq., pension fund, filed suit against its investment manager and principals alleging that defendants knew by 1998 that investing with Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC (BLMIS) was imprudent; that these defendants breached their fiduciary duty by failing to warn the fund of this fact; that if warned, the fund would have withdrawn the full sum appearing on its 1998 BLMIS account statements; and that prudent alternative investment of that sum would have earned more than the fund’s actual net withdrawals from its BLMIS account between 1999 and 2008. Plaintiffs also filed suit against Bank of New York Mellon Corporation, which acquired the investment manager in 2000, alleging that it knowingly participated as a non‐fiduciary in the fiduciary breach. The district court dismissed the complaint for failure to state a claim under Rule 12(b)(6) and for failure to allege an actual injury sufficient to establish Article III standing under Rule 12(b)(1). The court concluded that plaintiffs failed to allege facts sufficient to show Article III standing where plaintiffs have not plausibly alleged losses in excess of their profits; the increase in pension funds does not constitute a cognizable loss; the court rejected plaintiffs' claim of disgorgement of Simon and Wohl; and the complaint fails to state a claim against BNY Mellon for participation in a breach of fiduciary duty by Ivy, Simon, and Wohl. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "Trustees of the Upstate New York Engineers Pension Fund v. Ivy Asset Management" on Justia Law

Kelly Foster filed suit against Appellees under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), 29 U.S.C. 1132(a), to enforce her rights under short-term and long-term disability benefit plans that had been adopted by her employer, Sun Trust Bank. The district court granted summary judgment to Appellees and dismissed Foster's complaint. The district court then denied Foster's motion for reconsideration. The court affirmed the district court's finding that the short-term disability plan is an ERISA-exempt “payroll practice” under Department of Labor regulations; held that the district court appropriately applied a deferential standard of review to the administrator’s denial of benefits under the long-term disability plan because the terms of the plan unambiguously granted the administrator, and the administrator alone, the power to construe critical terms of the plan and to decide an employee’s eligibility for benefits; and held that the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying Foster's motion for reconsideration. View "Foster v. Sedgwick Claims Management Services, Inc." on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed suit under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), 29 U.S.C. 1001 et seq., seeking judicial review of the denial of benefits under his long term disability policy sponsored by his employer and issued by Northwestern Mutual. The court held that the district court erred in denying plaintiff his long term disability benefits under the Plan where the administrative record plainly showed that plaintiff could not sit for more than four hours a day. Nonetheless, the district court upheld Northwestern Mutual’s determination that Armani could perform work at the “sedentary” level. The court agreed with other circuits and held that an employee who cannot sit for more than four hours in an eight-hour workday cannot perform “sedentary” work that requires “sitting most of the time.” Accordingly, the court vacated and remanded. View "Armani v. Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co." on Justia Law

Central States is a self-funded Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) plan that provides health coverage to participating Teamsters and their dependents. The plan’s trustee sought a declaratory judgment concerning student athletes who had medical coverage under both the Central States plan and independent insurers’ policies. The trustee alleged that the plan paid the beneficiaries’ medical bills in full (about $343,000) and the insurers owe reimbursement. The plan and the insurers’ policies have competing coordination-of-benefits clauses, and each side claims that its respective provision makes the other primarily liable for the beneficiaries’ medical expenses (29 U.S.C. 1132(a)(3)). The Seventh Circuit affirmed dismissal of the case. ERISA section 502(a)(3) does not authorize suits of this type because the relief sought is legal, not equitable. View "Central States, Southeast & Southwest Areas Health & Welfare Fund v. American International Group, Inc." on Justia Law

Before accepting a transfer to a Bridgestone facility in North Carolina, Deschamps expressed concern about losing pension credit for his 10 years of employment with Bridgestone in Canada. After receiving assurances from Bridgestone’s management team that he would keep his pension credit, Deschamps accepted the position. For several years, Deschamps received written materials confirming that his date of service for pension purposes would be August 1983. He turned down employment with a competitor at a higher salary because of the purportedly higher pension benefits he would receive at Bridgestone. In 2010, Deschamps discovered that Bridgestone had changed his service date to August 1993, the date he began working at the American plant. After failed attempts to appeal this change through Bridgestone’s internal procedures, Deschamps filed suit, alleging equitable estoppel, breach of fiduciary duty, and an anti-cutback violation of ERISA, 29 U.S.C. 1054(g). The Sixth Circuit affirmed summary judgment for Deschamps on all three claims. The text of the plan “is at worst ambiguous, but at best, favors Deschamps’s argument that he was a covered employee in 1983” and, as a result of the change in the interpretation of this provision that excluded foreign employees from being classified as covered employees, Deschamps’s benefits were decreased. View "Deschamps v. Bridgestone Americas, Inc." on Justia Law

After the BP Stock Fund lost significant value, the affected investors filed suit alleging that the plan fiduciaries breached their duties of prudence and loyalty by allowing the Plans to acquire and hold overvalued BP stock; breached their duty to provide adequate investment information to plan participants; and breached their duty to monitor those responsible for managing the BP Stock Fund. The district court held that the stockholders had failed to overcome the Moench v. Robertson presumption and dismissed their claims. The stockholders appealed, and while their appeal was pending in this court, the Supreme Court issued Fifth Third Bancorp v. Dudenhoeffer, holding that there was no such “presumption of prudence” under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), 29 U.S.C. 1001 et seq. On remand, the district court held that the stockholders had plausibly alleged that defendants had inside information; and the stockholders had plausibly alleged two alternative actions that defendants could have taken that met the Fifth Third standard: freezing, limiting, or restricting company stock purchases; and disclosing unfavorable information to the public. The district court granted the motion to amend with respect to pleading these alternative actions. It then certified defendants’ motion for interlocutory appeal. The court concluded, however, that the district court here erred when it altered the language of Fifth Third to reach its holding. Under the Supreme Court’s formulation, the plaintiff bears the significant burden of proposing an alternative course of action so clearly beneficial that a prudent fiduciary could not conclude that it would be more likely to harm the fund than to help it. In this case, the stockholders have failed to do so. Because the stockholders' amended complaint is insufficient and the district court erred in granting their motion to amend, the court reversed and remanded. View "Whitley v. BP, P.L.C." on Justia Law

This case concerns employee benefits plans sponsored by AIG or its affiliates under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), 29 U.S.C. 1001 et seq. At issue is whether the Plans are "affiliates" of AIG for the purposes of a class action settlement agreement. The district court held that appellants are "affiliates" of AIG and thus ineligible for their own portion of a class settlement agreement with AIG. The court held that appellants have standing to appeal the district court's denial of the motion to direct and dismissed appellants' appeal as to the denial of their motion to intervene as moot. On the merits, the court held that because ERISA imposes important statutory limits on an employer’s control over the management and policies of an employee benefit plan, those plans do not fall within the ordinary meaning of "affiliate." Therefore, the court concluded that appellants are entitled to their own portion of the settlement and appellees will have a somewhat smaller portion. The court vacated the denial of the Plans' motion to direct. View "In re AIG Securities Litig." on Justia Law