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May 12, 2026
ST. LOUIS — Becoming the first appellate court to weigh in on a growing wave of Employee Retirement Income Security Act forfeiture cases, the Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on May 12 affirmed dismissal for lack of standing but ordered remand because it agreed with the appellant “that the district court abused its discretion by dismissing his complaint with prejudice.”
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May 12, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Proposed rules that the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) said in a news release “would create a new category of limited excepted benefits to further expand the ability of employers to offer meaningful fertility benefits to their employees” would do so by amending a regulation that applies to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act and other federal laws.
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May 12, 2026
ST. LOUIS — Saying it agreed with the administrator of an accidental death and dismemberment (AD&D) plan that the “claim was not covered under the plan and that an exclusion applied,” the Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on May 11 affirmed judgment in a case concerning an insured who fell and hit his head while on blood thinners, developed a subdural hematoma and then died.
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May 12, 2026
BUFFALO, N.Y. — On de novo review following a bench trial, a New York federal magistrate judge ruled that a claimant is entitled to retroactive long-term disability (LTD) benefits and prejudgment interest, concluding that “the cognitive effects of” brain cancer treatment left the claimant “unable to give notice of her long-term disability claim at the time that she stopped working in December 2009” and that “she gave notice ‘as soon as reasonably possible’ after her husband discovered the policy in September 2021.”
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May 12, 2026
PASADENA, Calif. — Largely siding with a group health plan participant in an Employee Retirement Income Security Act suit over surgery coverage, the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals issued an unpublished memorandum disposition ruling that the trial court correctly applied a deferential standard of review but abused its discretion by denying attorney fees and declining to impose statutory penalties.
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May 12, 2026
RICHMOND, Va. — Awarding attorney fees that totaled 20% of the total settlement instead of the requested 33-1/3%, a Virginia federal judge granted final approval of a $4.7 million class settlement in a case that survived dismissal and was part of a wave of similar Employee Retirement Income Security Act suits over health plan tobacco surcharges.
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May 11, 2026
NEW CASTLE, Del. — Following a request by the appellants, the Delaware Supreme Court issued a slightly revised opinion that did not change the outcome reversing the Delaware Court of Chancery in a unanimous en banc ruling that the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 does not bar “advancement of litigation expenses for the defense of state-law claims brought in state court” because the facts show that the advancement “does not relieve Defendants from ERISA responsibility or liability.”
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May 08, 2026
DALLAS — A Texas federal judge dismissed without prejudice an amended putative class action complaint filed under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) challenging a retirement plan’s use of a Prudential Guaranteed Income Fund in its 401(k) plan, holding that the plaintiffs failed to plausibly allege fiduciary imprudence because they failed to connect the retirement plan’s offshore reinsurance arrangements, low surplus-to-liabilities ratios and allegedly underperforming crediting rates to deficiencies in the fiduciary decision-making process.
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May 08, 2026
CINCINNATI — Retirees have responded to petitions for panel and en banc rehearing at the request of the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals following a 2-1 ruling that revived two putative class suits contesting the use of decades-old mortality tables by holding that the Employee Retirement Income Security Act “prohibits employers from using unreasonable, inappropriate actuarial assumptions” when making certain pension annuity calculations.
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May 08, 2026
Appellate courts still have yet to rule on the wave of putative class Employee Retirement Income Security Act challenges to a common use of forfeited nonvested matching retirement contributions, but oral argument has been conducted in one of the 15 pending appeals of rulings dismissing such cases and is scheduled in three more, with the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) to participate in those arguments as amicus curiae.
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May 07, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Urging the U.S. Supreme Court to deny certiorari regarding a ruling that retirees’ attempt to get federal compensation for cuts made to their vested pension benefits failed because the Multiemployer Pension Reform Act of 2014 (MPRA) “was not a physical taking and plaintiffs did not prove it was a regulatory taking,” the government argued in part that the petitioners “fail to identify any conflict in the lower courts on the question presented” and rely “on a series of inapposite circuit and state-court cases, none of which arose in the” context of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act “or addressed an analogous claim.”
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May 06, 2026
RIVERSIDE, Calif. — Overruling the lone objection he said failed to “raise substantive or persuasive concerns about the adequacy, reasonableness, or fairness of the settlement,” a California federal judge granted final approval to a $21.5 million class deal that resolved a long-running Employee Retirement Income Security Act pension benefits class action the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals partly revived in November 2024 after a bench trial.
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May 05, 2026
NEW YORK — On May 4, a New York federal judge granted preliminary approval to a settlement that a class of employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) participants say has “a total economic value exceeding $22.5 million” and “represents a recovery of approximately 71% of remaining losses” in the Employee Retirement Income Security Act case.
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May 01, 2026
MADISON, Wis. — Awarding reduced attorney fees and costs of $151,612.50 and $402, respectively, and noting that the insurer ultimately reinstated the long-term disability (LTD) benefits at issue, a Wisconsin federal judge rejected the “baseless” argument that remand for reprocessing “does not constitute some success on the merits” in a case filed by a former internal medicine physician.
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May 01, 2026
RICHMOND, Va. — Arguing in part that en banc rehearing is not warranted because “[t]he panel nowhere placed class certification off-limits for all § 502(a)(2) claims involving defined-contribution plans,” an employer urged the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals to let stand an interlocutory ruling that reversed and vacated certification of a mandatory class in an Employee Retirement Income Security Act case challenging the employer’s decision to include passively managed BlackRock LifePath Index target date funds (TDFs) in its retirement plan.
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April 30, 2026
As of April 29, at least two federal courts have dismissed suits filed by insurers alleging fraud in the arbitration process created by the No Surprises Act (NSA), rejecting the insurers’ bids to impose judicial review over the administrative arbitration process established by Congress when it enacted the NSA.
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April 30, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a respondent brief that the U.S. Supreme Court requested regarding a certiorari request that health insurance plan petitioners and trade association amici curiae contend wrongly broadened equitable estoppel under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, Texas emergency medicine physician groups argue in part that the petition is “based on a description of the case that bears no resemblance to reality” and needlessly seeks “to resolve a split in authority that does not exist.”
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April 29, 2026
NEW ORLEANS — Vacating a panel decision that included a partial dissent, the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on April 28 granted a petition for en banc rehearing that the appellant said concerns “[w]hether a request for compensatory money damages to remedy an alleged breach of fiduciary duties is an equitable, not legal, remedy”; the case challenges the behavior of the third-party administrator (TPA) of health plans.
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April 28, 2026
NEW YORK — Issuing a brief summary order upholding denial of a motion for accounting or postjudgment discovery in a partially successful class action over a 1998 conversion that turned a traditional defined-benefit pension plan to a cash-balance plan, the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals called the challenged decisions “careful and thorough” and said it affirmed them based on “substantially the reasons” the lower court cited.
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April 27, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — In an April 24 docket entry, the U.S. Supreme Court requested a response to a certiorari petition in which a health plan beneficiary argues that Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals precedent from 1995 instituting an “information test” in Employee Retirement Income Security Act documents cases disregards the statute’s text; the petitioner says the high court “is unlikely to receive a cleaner vehicle to resolve a conflict that otherwise permanently entrenches two irreconcilable rules of national plan administration and subverts the uniformity of the federal common law.”
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April 27, 2026
DETROIT — In a ruling that included a choice-of-law analysis, a Michigan federal judge dismissed a suit challenging denial of long-term disability (LTD) benefits as time-barred under a group policy’s three-year contractual limitations period.
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April 27, 2026
JASPER, Ala. — A long-term disability (LTD) recipient is headed to the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals to challenge an Alabama federal court ruling that lets stand the plan administrator’s decision to withhold her monthly benefit until it has recovered more than $16,000 that it said she was overpaid due to “a Social Security benefit for disabled widows” that the administrator determined should be offset.
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April 24, 2026
NEW YORK — Mostly denying cross-motions for summary judgment filed by the administrator of long-term disability (LTD) plan and a claimant who purportedly suffered from long COVID but was denied benefits, a New York federal judge concluded that material facts remain in dispute.
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April 23, 2026
NEW YORK — Responding to the appellees’ request to remove certain language from its decision in an Employee Retirement Income Security Act dispute centered on residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS), the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on April 22 issued an amended opinion that — like the initial one — partly reversed and remanded a ruling against pension fund trustees.
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April 23, 2026
RICHMOND, Va. — As urged by the appellees and a handful of amici curiae, the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals agreed that an incentive compensation program “qualifies as a ‘bonus plan exempt from’” the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, affirming summary judgment against a former financial adviser who filed the putative class action; one panel member wrote a concurring opinion to emphasize “that any other conclusion would generate an avalanche of deleterious consequences.”