The Department of Labor (DOL) has made it no secret that it actively engages in enforcement activities against employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) with a particular focus on the valuation of the stock of privately held companies that is held or bought by the ESOP.[1] The valuation of the company stock is
“Wilderness therapy? What’s that?”
That’s the common response I receive when I mention that wilderness therapy is a hot topic in mental health parity litigation. Wilderness therapy is a form of residential treatment that uses nature and the outdoors as a therapeutic tool. Often used with operationally-defiant or drug-addicted teens, wilderness therapy combines traditional therapy
The University of Pennsylvania suffered a setback in the first ERISA fee case against a university to be decided by a U.S. Court of Appeals. In Sweda v. the University of Pennsylvania, a divided panel of the Third Circuit ruled 2-1 that the district court had erred in granting the university’s motion to dismiss.
The Supreme Court decisions in Dudenhoeffer (2014) and Amgen (2016) made it more difficult, as a practical matter, for plaintiffs to bring ERISA duty of prudence claims involving employer stock. In the ensuing years, every stock drop complaint filed by ERISA plan participants around the country was dismissed for failure to allege facts satisfying Dudenhoeffer
Plaintiffs’ lawyers have filed a series of cases challenging the lawfulness of the actuarial assumptions used in certain defined benefit retirement plans. The seventh such case was filed on May 20, 2019 in the Eastern District of Virginia.
All seven complaints are based on the same general theories and the same specific claims for relief