Benefits & ERISA Law

Two More ERISA Cases for the Supreme Court?

The good folks who write the SCOTUS blog are engaged in one of their periodic attempts to read the tea leaves and predict what cases the Supreme Court will choose to hear. This time, they think the Court will review two ERISA cases, Geddes v. United Staffing - which concerns the standard of review to be applied to benefit determinations when fiduciary duties are delegated to a non-fiduciary - and Amschwand v. Spherion Corp., which presents an opportunity to clarify when monetary awards for breaches of fiduciary duty can qualify as equitable relief actionable under ERISA. If the Court hears both cases, we will see a continuation of the trend of the Court focusing on and likely reframing the course of ERISA litigation. Geddes provides not just an opportunity to understand the impact of delegation to third party administrators, and to open up for further development some of the unsettled issues in that realm, but also an opportunity, on the heels of whatever the Court decides in the currently pending MetLife v. Glenn case, to alter the settled understandings of when and how to apply the differing standards of review that apply in benefit cases. Amschwand, in turn, presents the Court with an opportunity to address a very technical and specific question, but one that continues to bedevil courts and litigants, namely the question of what types of claims for monetary recovery can proceed, under current Supreme Court jurisprudence, as claims for equitable relief under ERISA. Of note, the Solicitor General’s office, in recommending that the Court accept review of that case, seems to emphasize a need to broaden the range of theories that can be brought as equitable relief claims under ERISA so as to ensure an acceptable range of remedies and recourse to aggrieved plan participants, a proposition that many who favor broader remedies might not have expected to be forwarded by the administration’s legal team.

Full post as published by Boston ERISA Law Blog on June 05, 2008 (boomark / email).