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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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Employers may be bound by multiemployer pension plans’ trust agreements and collections policies, but the force of these governing documents may have its limits. In Nevada Resorts Ass’n–Int’l All. of Theatrical Stage Emps. and Moving Picture Mach. Operators of the U.S. and Canada Local 720 Pension Trust v. JB Viva Vegas, L.P., No. 2:19-cv-00499…

In Buckner v. Murray, No. 21-cv-567, 2024 WL 1366785 (D.D.C. Mar. 30, 2024), the court dismissed the United Mine Workers of America 1974 Pension Plan’s suit to collect $6.5 billion in withdrawal liability because the trustees did not file suit in accordance with the plan’s trust agreement.  After the contributing employer filed for bankruptcy…

In Bulk Transp. v. Teamsters Union No. 142 Pension Fund, No. 23-1563, 2024 WL 1230236 (7th Cir. Mar. 22, 2024), the Seventh Circuit held that the contributions used to calculate an employer’s withdrawal liability may include only the contributions the employer was required to remit pursuant to the terms of the parties’ collective bargaining…

In Svenhard’s Swedish Bakery v. United States Bakery, Bk. No. 19-15277, 2023 WL 5541420 (9th Cir. Aug. 29, 2023), the Ninth Circuit held that a settlement agreement that resolved an employer’s withdrawal liability to a multiemployer pension fund was not an executory contract that could be assumed and assigned to a third-party when that employer subsequently filed for bankruptcy.  The decision is instructive for multiemployer funds and employers that negotiate settlement agreements to resolve these types of liabilities.