PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Benefits Companion - New IRS Guidance on SECURE 2.0 Act Student Loan Employer Contributions
What Can A Tax Attorney Do For You? A Podcast With Janathan Allen
PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Benefits Companion - Auto-Portability: A New Way to Keep Retirement Savings Growing
#WorkforceWednesday: SECURE Act 2.0 - What 401(k) Plan Sponsors Need to Know - Employment Law This Week®
PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Benefits Companion - Plan Administrators’ 2022 Year-End Checklist
PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Benefits Companion - Court Decisions Impacting Plan Sponsors and Fiduciaries
PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Benefits Companion - Helping Employers Address the Gender Gap in Retirement Savings
PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Benefits Companion - Millennials, Boomers and Retirement Planning
The Form 5500: What All Employers and Plan Administrators Need to Know and How to Avoid Costly Fines
PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Benefits Companion - Cryptocurrency in 401(k) Plans
PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Benefits Companion - What Constitutes Plan Assets Under ERISA?
2022 Resolutions: What Healthcare Practices Need To Tackle In the New Year
PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Benefits Companion - Cautionary Tales for Preapproved Plan Documents
DOL Clarifies Timing of Lifetime Income Disclosures in Benefit Statements
PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Benefits Companion - Back to the Future: SECURE Act and SECURE Act 2.0
PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Benefits Companion - Payroll Integration for Plan Sponsors
PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Benefits Companion - Plan Administrators’ 2020 Year-End Checklist
PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Benefits Companion - Cybersecurity Considerations for Retirement Plan Sponsors
Three Timely Benefits Items Everyone Should Know
PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Benefits Companion - COVID-19 Edition - Employee Benefits Considerations When Conducting Furloughs and Layoffs
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
Case Name and Number: Spence v. American Airlines, Inc., et al., No. 4:23-cv-00552 - INTRODUCTION - On June 20, 2024, Judge Reed O’Connor in the Northern District of Texas (the “court”) denied a motion for summary...more
All qualified retirement plans are subject to a myriad of requirements of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, as amended (ERISA). The United States Department of Labor (DOL) is charged with enforcing the...more
I grew up in New York City and the City of today isn’t like it was when I grew up. They called it Fun City and not because it was fun unless you thought crime was fun. I remember going to take a Washington D.C. bus (because...more
The Employee Retirement Income Security Act ("ERISA") plaintiffs' bar has found a new way to allege that 401(k) plan sponsors have breached their fiduciary duty....more
A Texas federal judge recently permitted an environmental, social, and governance- (ESG) related Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) case filed by an airline pilot against his employer and its benefits plan to...more
A judge in the Eastern District of Wisconsin recently issued a trio of decisions on the same day, which tossed suits alleging 401(k) plan mismanagement because all three complaints contained insufficient pleadings that did...more
The first complaint was filed in what is expected to be a wave of litigation alleging breach of fiduciary duty in selecting and monitoring welfare plan vendors. While the facts of this particular case may make it somewhat...more
In September 2023, former employees of Bed Bath & Beyond sued members of the company’s 401(k) committee, the committee responsible for the prudent management of the company’s 401(k) plan. The former employees allege they lost...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
On August 21, 2023, the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota largely dismissed—for a second time—a putative ERISA class action challenging “excessive” fees and “poor” performance in a 401(k) plan. Fritton v....more
99 Cents Only Stores have come to terms with an excessive fee suit involving their 401(k) plan for about $749,901.01 more than their name. 99 Cents Only was sued for 1) for breach of fiduciary duties of prudence and...more
Fiduciaries of retirement plans continue to be plagued by class actions brought under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) challenging their fiduciary management of investment options and participant fees. A...more
A class action lawsuit brought by former SeaWorld employees that alleged participants in the SWBG LLC 401(k) plan were harmed will continue. The former employees’ arguments sustained the fiduciary breach of the duty of...more
An ERISA action alleging breaches of fiduciary duty recently cleared the pleadings stage in Minnesota district court, narrowly avoiding a complete dismissal. See Schave v. CentraCare Health Sys., No. 22-cv-1555 (WMW/LIB),...more
Coriant agreed to pay $1 million to resolve claims it violated its fiduciary duties under ERISA while administering its 401(k) plan. Coriant was an optical telecommunications company that was acquired by another company in...more
Lawsuits against employers offering retirement benefit plans have been on the rise. Recent suits, discussed in this update, have provided some guidance for employers. In January 2022, the Supreme Court issued the Hughes...more
2022 has seen an increase in putative class actions brought under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) (29 U.S.C. §§ 1109 and 1132) against plan fiduciaries. Plaintiffs typically allege that plan fiduciaries...more
In an unusual decision, a federal judge last month refused to strike a plaintiff class’ demand for a jury trial in an ERISA 401(k) class action. In Garthwait v. Eversource Energy Co., a class of former and current...more
A U.S. District Court federal magistrate judge in the Eastern District of Wisconsin mostly sided with Nestlé USA Inc by recommending the dismissal. of a class action lawsuit alleging fiduciary negligence and self-dealing in...more
Plaintiffs must plead a “sound basis for comparison—a meaningful benchmark” — to sustain their claims of imprudent investment and excessive fee against a 401(k) plan, the federal appeals court in St. Louis has held,...more
On this episode of Williams Mullen's Benefits Companion, host Brydon DeWitt is joined by the chair of Williams Mullen’s Employee Benefits & Executive Compensation Practice, Marc Purintun, who discusses a recent Supreme Court...more
On August 29, 2022, the Seventh Circuit decided Albert v. Oshkosh Corporation, affirming a district court’s dismissal of breach of fiduciary claims related to Oshkosh Corporation’s management of its 401(k) plan, and striking...more
On June 21, 2022, the Sixth Circuit in Smith v. CommonSpirit Health unanimously affirmed the decision of the Eastern District of Kentucky dismissing with prejudice a putative class representative’s ERISA fiduciary breach...more