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Neil V. Shah

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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.

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In Central States, S.E. & S.W. Pension Fund v. McKesson Corp., No. 23-cv-16770, 2025 WL 81358 (N.D. Ill. Jan. 13, 2025), the district court affirmed that a multiemployer pension plan’s calculation of withdrawal liability should not have included contribution rate increases imposed after the plan had implemented a rehabilitation plan.

Multiemployer benefit plans generally require contributing employers to submit “remittance reports” that identify the employees that performed covered work, the type of work performed, and the amount of time worked.  Plans rely on the timely and accurate submission of these reports to ensure employers remit all required contributions and that participants accrue all benefits owed. …

Under 29 U.S.C. § 1301(b)(1), all “trades or businesses” under common control with an employer that has withdrawn from a multiemployer pension plan are jointly and severally liable for the employer’s withdrawal liability.  The statute does not define what it means to be a “trade or business,” and though the statute references regulations promulgated by the…

When an employer withdraws from a multiemployer pension plan, the plan’s trustees must notify the employer of the amount of its withdrawal liability and demand payment.  Employers assessed with withdrawal liability often argue that the assessment is untimely because the trustees did not send it to the employer “as soon as practicable,” as is required…