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By Sandra R. Mihok, member, Eckert Seamans Attorneys at Law Health insurance companies have increasingly become the target of cyberattacks, a trend which has spurred a wave of class action lawsuits brought by individuals whose personal information has been breached.
By James M. Leva, JD, Day Pitney LLP A New Jersey federal court recently dismissed a disabled employee’s state-law contract claim, holding that the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) preempted it.
A federal district court in Pennsylvania denied a large part of US Airways’ attempted recovery from the estate of plan participant James McCutchen, citing inconsistencies between the company’s plan document and summary plan description. If a plan’s official plan document states that its language trumps that of the SPD, the plan should not assert rights […]
By Jennifer Carsen, JD, Legal Editor On March 1, 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the state of Vermont in an Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) case that could have broad implications for states’ ability to regulate healthcare practices and reforms within their borders.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s March 1 ruling in a Vermont case relieves self-insured employers from the obligation to report claims data to state governments that have established databases reflecting healthcare use and costs for citizens. The reach of the ruling extends beyond Vermont to all self-insured plans. “It absolutely has national implications,” Linda J. Cohen, […]
The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has published a notice of proposed rulemaking and an interpretive bulletin meant to guide states as they create Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA)-compliant programs that help more workers save for retirement.
By Jennifer Carsen, JD, Legal Editor In a new decision termed “bizarre” by dissenting Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the U.S. Supreme Court has denied an ERISA plan’s bid for reimbursement on a seemingly archaic definition of what constitutes “equitable” relief.
Monitoring the performance of service providers, making required disclosures to participants and beneficiaries, keeping good records and filing reports with the government are just a few of the important functions a fiduciary must ensure are properly executed, an enforcement official at the U.S. Department of Labor’s Employee Benefits Security Administration unit told a group of […]
Can you please advise me on the regulations for providing summary plan descriptions (SPDs) for our employees? Since we don’t have SPDs yet, should there be an urgency in getting them produced for distribution this year or can this be a project for 2016?
Fiduciary status under ERISA “is not an all-or-nothing concept,” according to a recent federal district court ruling that found BP and its North American unit were not liable for their retirement plan employees’ breaches of fiduciary duty. The lawsuit arose from a BP company stock plan available as investment to plan participants that plunged in […]