Issue: Holiday 2019

Employees

Message from New EBC Plaintiff Co-Chair, Cassie Springer Ayeni

By: Cassie Springer Ayeni, Springer Ayeni, APLC

I attended my first Employee Benefits Committee (EBC) midwinter meeting in 2002, as I was on the cusp of graduating from UC Berkeley School of Law. Beth Lishner was my assigned mentor, and she remained in that role for many years after that first conference. I have developed deep and lasting friendships through this committee, and it is my honor to serve as the EBC’s 2019-2022 Plaintiff Co-Chair.

Employees

Personal Injury Subrogation Claims Under ERISA: Hawaii Does the Work, and the Ninth Circuit Gets ERISA Right

By: Cassie Springer Ayeni, Springer Ayeni, APLC

ERISA medical plan subrogation provisions have long stirred the passions of personal injury attorneys. One can appreciate the sentiment: How is it, after all, that a personal injury plaintiff can lose a substantial chunk of her tort recovery merely because she had medical insurance as an employment benefit?

Employees

Message from New EBC Management Co-Chair Aliya Robinson

By: Aliya Robinson, The ERISA Industry Committee, Washington, DC

I am excited and honored to begin a two-year term as Management Co-Chair of the Employee Benefits Committee. I am excited to work with Co-Chairs Joanne Roskey, Benjamin Eisner, and Cassie Springer Ayeni and with the various sub-committees to continue the great programming, treatise work, and growth of the Committee.

Employees

The Final Frontier: Adding a Retirement Tier

By: R. Bradford Huss, Craig P. Hoffman, and Catherine L. Reagan, Trucker Huss

401(k) plans have been with us for almost 40 years. Over that time, the focus for most plans has been on helping participants accumulate savings that will be consumed in retirement. With the decline in defined benefit plans, 401(k) plans are providing an increasingly large percentage of the supplemental retirement income for their participants.

Employees

The 2020 Midwinter Meeting in Rancho Mirage

We are so excited to stay at the Omni Rancho Las Palmas, a resort with a waterslide, lazy river, 27 holes of golf, 23 tennis courts, and a 20,000 square foot spa, and we hope you will not only bring your colleagues, but your families as well!

Employees

Pushing “Relates to” About As Far As it Will Stretch

By: James M. Nelson, Greenberg Traurig

As our loyal readers have experienced, the last edition of this newsletter each year usually has a lighter tone. Sometimes that is because more rigorous content generation from our volunteer (and invariably time compressed) authors becomes even more challenging to obtain this time of year. The material must still have some benefits or Committee related nature.

Employees

ERISA Re-Classification of Independent Contractors, Part II

By: James M. Nelson, Greenberg Traurig

Part Two explores whether the prohibition on impinging “substantive rights” under the Rules Enabling Act (hereafter REA) is triggered when Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23 (hereafter Rule 23) is used to reclassify class members with independent contractor agreements into employees covered under ERISA. There is also a question as to whether in this context a Rule 23 certification prior to a merits determination on employee status conflicts with Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 82.