A federal district court in Minnesota dismissed a plan participant’s allegations that plan fiduciaries mismanaged a defined benefit plan — and thus caused it to be underfunded — because the plan’s financial condition improved during the course of the litigation.  As reported here, the court previously held that these allegations were sufficient to establish that plaintiffs suffered an injury in fact sufficient to confer Article III standing.  In its most recent opinion, the court held that plaintiffs’ claims were now moot because the plan had become overfunded.  As a result, “any money that could be awarded would simply add to the Plan’s now-existing surplus, in which Plaintiffs have no legal interest.”  The court also held that “to the extent that the Plan becomes underfunded again in the future, raising anew concerns about the security of Plan participants’ future stream of benefits, the causal connection between the new increased risk of default and the Defendants’ alleged violations in 2007 through 2010 would be tenuous at best.”  The case is Adedipe v. U.S. Bank, N.A., No. 13-2687, slip op. (D. Minn. Dec. 29, 2015).

 

Photo of Neil V. Shah Neil V. Shah

Neil V. Shah is a member of the Employee Benefits & Executive Compensation Group, where he focuses on ERISA litigation.

He is the lead attorney representing the firm’s Taft-Hartley plan clients in withdrawal liability and delinquent contributions matters.  As part of his practice…

Neil V. Shah is a member of the Employee Benefits & Executive Compensation Group, where he focuses on ERISA litigation.

He is the lead attorney representing the firm’s Taft-Hartley plan clients in withdrawal liability and delinquent contributions matters.  As part of his practice, Neil pursues employers, their owners and officers, and affiliated companies to collect the amounts owed to these plans using a variety of complex legal theories, and has secured several precedential opinions and multi-million-dollar judgments in their favor.  Neil also defends these plans in arbitrations challenging the methods and assumptions used to calculate withdrawal liability, which has yielded a number of notable arbitration decisions and court opinions.  Owing to his experience in this area, Neil is a co-editor of the withdrawal liability chapter of the premier employee benefits treatise, Employee Benefits Law, published by Bloomberg, and regularly presents on the topic before practitioners and consultants that work in the area, such as at meetings of the Conference of Consulting Actuaries and the Employee Benefits Section of ABA’s Section of Labor & Employment Law.

In addition to his Taft-Hartley plan experience, Neil has represented several plan sponsors and fiduciaries in ERISA class actions alleging that the plan’s investments or other practices are imprudent, such as excessive fee and stock drop cases.

Prior to joining Proskauer, Neil was an associate at a large regional firm, where he litigated individual and class actions involving challenges to insurer claims adjudication procedures under ERISA, fraud recoveries against healthcare providers, and claims for benefits.

Neil has authored several articles, including those published in the New Jersey Law Journal and Bloomberg National Affairs.  He is also a frequent contributor to Proskauer’s Employee Benefits & Executive Compensation Blog.