January 2026 ERISA Litigation Update:

Given the continuing wave of ERISA litigation, this article has become a mainstay of The Speed Reader. 

The most common type of ERISA case involves retirement plan participants’ allegations that plan fiduciaries caused participants to pay excessive recordkeeping and investment fees and included one or more poorly-performing investment options in the plan. Recent cases in this category include the following:

• Fleming v. Kellogg Company (dismissed on December 8 by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan)

Other types of recent ERISA cases are as follows:
Williams v. Shapiro (dismissed on December 15 by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit):  The court addressed the following plan document provisions:

• “All Covered Claims must be resolved exclusively pursuant to the provisions of this Section.” Covered Claims include “any claim made by or on behalf of a current or former Employee, a current or former Participant or current or former Beneficiary or by or on behalf of the Plan, the Trust or under the Trust Agreement (a “Claimant”)… including without limitation claims for breach of fiduciary duty.”
• “All Covered Claims must be brought solely in the Claimant’s individual capacity and not in a representative capacity or on a class, collective, or group basis. Each arbitration shall be limited solely to one Claimant’s Covered Claims, and that Claimant may not seek or receive any remedy which has the purpose or effect of providing additional benefits or monetary or other relief to any individual or entity other than the Claimant.”  

The defendants sought to compel arbitration under those provisions, but the appeals court denied the defendants’ motion. As support for that ruling, the appeals court noted that several federal courts have invalidated arbitration provisions involving the breach of an ERISA fiduciary duty. That is because such courts, and now this appeals court, do not favor arbitration language preventing plan participants from effectively vindicating their ERISA rights.

In this regard, the court explained that while ERISA expressly allows participants to file a lawsuit for plan-wide relief involving fiduciary breaches, the arbitration language at issue prevents participants from obtaining plan-wide relief. Therefore, the plan’s arbitration procedure is unenforceable.

Gasper v. EIDP, Inc. (dismissed on December 8 by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit):  The plaintiff sued his former employer and its retirement plan administrator, mainly asserting that:

• His monthly annuity payment improperly was reduced by $385.26 to cover the cost of the qualified joint and survivor annuity, which provides his former spouse with monthly payments upon the plaintiff’s death. According to the plaintiff, the qualified domestic relations order (“QDRO”) entered after his divorce required that any cost of the surviving spouse annuity be deducted from his former spouse’s portion of the plan benefit and should not result in a reduction to his benefit.
• He is entitled to statutory penalties, based on the plan administrator’s purported failure to provide him with certain plan documents in a timely manner.

In affirming the trial court’s decision, the appeals court first ruled that the QDRO unambiguously permitted, but did not require, that any cost of the surviving spouse annuity be deducted from the plaintiff’s former spouse’s retirement benefit. Second, the appeals court decided that the plan administrator properly calculated the plaintiff’s monthly annuity payment (which included an actuarial adjustment for the surviving spouse annuity that reduced the plaintiff’s monthly benefit).

Second, the appeals court ruled that the plaintiff timely received the main documents (e.g., Summary Plan Description) to which he was entitled under ERISA. Also, the plaintiff did not establish that he suffered any prejudice from failing to receive certain other documents timely, and he did not establish that the plan administrator acted in bad faith in responding to his document requests.

Garner v. Northrop Grumman Corporation (dismissed on December 4 by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia):  This is part of a recent wave of cases in which the plaintiff (a retirement plan participant) alleges that plan fiduciaries violated ERISA via their use of plan forfeitures. The plaintiffs here alleged that the defendants breached their ERISA duties by using forfeitures to fund matching contributions, instead of using forfeitures to pay plan expenses or to restore certain employees’ forfeited accounts.

The plan document provided that “To the extent not used in the Plan Year to restore Participants’ Accounts…or to pay expenses…, the Plan Administrator shall apply Forfeitures to reduce Company contributions due for the Plan Year in which they arise.” The plaintiffs interpreted the phrase “To the extent not used” as imposing an obligation to use forfeitures first to restore participant accounts or pay expenses before using forfeitures to fund matching contributions.

The court disagreed with that interpretation and ruled that the plan document’s forfeiture language “does not mandate that forfeitures be used in any particular order, only that they be used for one of three listed purposes—pay administrative expenses, restore participant accounts, or apply to employer contributions.” In other words, the court stated that the meaning of the phrase “To the extent that” is that if forfeitures are not used up by paying for plan expenses or for restoring participants’ accounts, then any remaining forfeitures can be used for matching  contributions. Furthermore, while the plan language at issue “certainly implies that forfeitures may be used for the restoration of benefits and Plan expenses, it cannot be reasonably read to mean that forfeitures must be used for the first two purposes before they can be used for employer contributions.”

Mayor v. Metropolitan Life Insurance Company (dismissed on November 21 by the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah):  The plaintiff is the spouse of a deceased ERISA plan participant, who had life insurance and accidental death coverage under the defendant plan sponsor’s plans. After the participant died, the plaintiff submitted a claim for insurance benefits as the sole beneficiary of her husband’s life insurance and accidental death coverage. MetLife, which acted as the claims administrator on behalf of the plan administrator, denied her claim for accidental death benefits. The plaintiff then appealed that denial and requested additional information from MetLife, but her appeal and requests were denied.

She subsequently filed this lawsuit, and one of her allegations is that the defendants failed to provide certain information to her (as required by ERISA). In this stage of the litigation, MetLife sought to have that allegation dismissed because MetLife only served as the plan’s claim administrator and not as the plan administrator.

In granting MetLife’s motion, the court explained:

• Under an ERISA-covered insurance policy, the plan administrator must, upon the written request of a plan participant or beneficiary, provide all relevant agreements or “instruments under which the plan is established or operated.”
• The failure or refusal to comply with such a request for information can result in the plan administrator being held liable to the participant or beneficiary for up to $110 per day from the date of such failure or refusal.
• The term “plan administrator” under ERISA means “the person specifically so designated by the terms of the instrument under which the plan is operated.”
• Only a plan administrator can be liable for failing to provide information required to be provided by ERISA. That liability does not extend to a party acting on the plan administrator’s behalf, such as a claims administrator.