-
May 15, 2026
BILLINGS, Mont. — Granting summary judgment in favor of a long-term disability (LTD) insurer that reduced, or “offset,” the plaintiff’s monthly check because of a pension rollover, a Montana federal judge ruled in part that the doctrine of contra proferentem — under which ambiguous contract terms must be construed against the insurer — doesn’t apply because “no genuine ambiguity exists after applying ordinary contract interpretation principles.”
-
May 15, 2026
NEWARK, N.J. — In a lawsuit brought by a medical testing lab seeking reimbursement from health insurers for COVID-19 testing, the insurers filed an amended counterclaim and third-party complaint seeking recoupment of $30 million they allegedly overpaid the lab after a New Jersey federal judge dismissed without prejudice state law claims by the insurers based on duplicative billing and billing for ancillary tests by the lab and the lab’s billing service.
-
May 14, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — In its second unanimous decision of the day, the U.S. Supreme Court on May 14 ruled that nothing in the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) bars a federal court from ruling on motions brought under Sections 9 and 10 of the FAA confirming or vacating an arbitration award when the court previously stayed the case pending arbitration.
-
May 13, 2026
SAN FRANCISCO — Rejecting a claimant’s argument that under California law the de novo standard of review should apply even though the insurer is afforded discretion under the policy, a California federal judge granted partial summary judgment for the defendant in a suit challenging denial of long-term disability (LTD) benefits, ruling that “the choice of law to be applied is North Carolina and the standard of review is abuse of discretion.”
-
May 13, 2026
The first appellate ruling on the wave of putative class Employee Retirement Income Security Act challenges to a common use of forfeited nonvested matching retirement contributions has now been issued, but at least 14 appeals of dismissal rulings remain pending and oral argument is scheduled for late May in three of those appeals, with the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) to participate in those arguments as amicus curiae.
-
May 12, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Merits briefing concerning pleading standards under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act is underway in the U.S. Supreme Court, with the petitioners and amici curiae urging vacatur of a ruling that a putative class suit challenging purportedly underperforming retirement plan investments in hedge funds and private equity was correctly dismissed for failure to allege a “meaningful benchmark”; the petitioners argue that the ruling “contradicts the statutory text, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and this Court’s precedent interpreting both” and is “illogical, unworkable, and unnecessary,” and the amici contend that it weakens protections that are vital for retirement savers.
-
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.”
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.”
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.”
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.”
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.”
-
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.
-
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.