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#WorkforceWednesday®: New DOL Guidance - ERISA Plan Cybersecurity Update - Employment Law This Week®
John Wick - What You Need To Know about the Corporate Transparency Act
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Once Removed Episode 24: Expressing Goals and Intent for the Trust
Episode 322 -- Checking in on Caremark Cases
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A Primer On Trusts - A Podcast with Janathan Allen
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Podcast Episode 189: Adding Context to Compliance and Color To Your Legal Practice
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In the world of ERISA litigation, process often trumps perfection. That was the story in Waldner v. Natixis, where a federal judge dismissed claims that Natixis and its plan committee acted disloyally and imprudently by...more
A Supreme Court decision in April made it easier for plaintiffs to keep ERISA prohibited transaction claims in play longer, and just days later a rare ERISA trial resulted in a huge win for a class of 401(k) plan...more
Excessive fee cases against plans governed by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) have been on the rise for the last decade. ERISA litigation is expanding with novel theories such as forfeiture litigation....more
Many employer-sponsored defined contributions plans, including 401(k) profit sharing plans and money purchase pension plans include a vesting schedule – a period over which a plan participant earns a nonforfeitable right to...more
The DOL updated its voluntary fiduciary correction program (“VFCP”) which was introduced over 20 years ago to allow plan sponsors to corrected enumerated fiduciary breaches. The amended VFCP now allows for self-correction of...more
Whether, and the extent to which, a plan fiduciary can consider nonpecuniary environmental, social and governance (“ESG”) objectives in selecting plan investments has been a hot-button issue for many years, with the view on...more
Chavez v. Plan Benefit Services, Inc., 108 F.4th 297 (5th Cir. 2024), began when three employees of a single employer sued the service providers of their health and welfare benefit plan for allegedly charging excessive fees...more
The October Monthly Minute highlights two recent retirement plan cases, one in which the court sides with the plan and emphasizes plan administrative review over specific investment results and another where plaintiffs are...more
Recent scrutiny of pharmacy benefit managers, also known as “PBMs,” has resulted in various lawsuits alleging that the high drug costs they charge violate ERISA. Among the first lawsuits in what appears to be a wave of new...more
A federal district court recently granted a motion to dismiss claims that defined contribution plan fiduciaries breached their fiduciary duties of loyalty and prudence, and violated ERISA’s anti-inurement and prohibited...more
As mentioned in our recent blog post, the recently filed class action lawsuit against Johnson & Johnson (Lewandowski v. Johnson & Johnson et. al., D.N.J., No. 1:24-cv-00671 (Feb. 5, 2024)) over alleged excessive prescription...more
Many plan sponsors have read about the lawsuit filed against Johnson & Johnson alleging that it breached its fiduciary duties with regard to the prescription drug component of its group health plan, causing participants to...more
When the same health plan administrator both administers a benefit plan and pays the benefits due under the plan, it is considered by courts to have a structural conflict of interest. That conflict of interest is not...more
A recent Ninth Circuit decision has generated considerable controversy amongst employee benefits practitioners by holding that plan fiduciaries engaged in prohibited transactions when they amended the plan’s existing...more
Following a bench trial in a Pennsylvania federal district court in Nunez v. B. Braun Medical, Inc., 401(k) plan fiduciaries defeated a lawsuit alleging that the fiduciaries imprudently managed and paid excessive...more
Although retirement plan excessive fee cases remain an ongoing concern for plan sponsors, the recent jury trial victory for Yale in Vellali, et. al. v. Yale University, et. al. provides hope for plans with strong, prudent...more
As plan sponsors and fiduciaries cope with the increased volume of class action Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) lawsuits, some have considered the prospects of reducing their exposure through arbitration...more
A U.S. District Court judge threw out a case against Microsoft which claimed that the BlackRock LifePath Index Funds suite of target-date funds was an imprudent investment choice for their plan participants....more
Mutual of America 401(k) plan participants have brought a class action lawsuit against Mutual of America Life Insurance Company for alleged breach of fiduciary duty....more
The Seventh Circuit recently provided a ray of sunshine in what has largely been a gloomy stretch for plan sponsors and fiduciaries defending ERISA breach of fiduciary duty claims based on allegedly excessive investment and...more
Former employees have sued Ricoh USA, alleging breaches of fiduciary duty under ERISA....more
Key Takeaways - ..Mishandling of premiums can lead to breach of fiduciary duty claims under ERISA against employers. ..Information beyond what is required to be disclosed by ERISA may need to be provided by plan...more
Welcome to Goodwin’s ERISA Litigation Update. Litigation involving ERISA-governed benefits plans has exploded in recent years. Lawyers in our award-winning ERISA Litigation practice have extensive experience litigating these...more
A Massachusetts district court recently ordered defendants in an ERISA fiduciary breach case to produce certain communications with their in-house and outside counsel, rejecting defendants’ argument that the communications...more
On January 24, 2022, in Hughes v. Northwestern University, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously affirmed its 2015 decision in Tibble v. Edison International, holding that fiduciaries of ERISA-subject defined contribution...more