A federal district court in Illinois held that participants in a multiemployer pension plan failed to plausibly allege that plan fiduciaries retaliated against them in violation of ERISA § 510 by refusing to consider their employer’s offer to settle its withdrawal liability to the plan. In lieu of paying withdrawal liability, the employer offered to
ERISA § 510
ERISA Implications for Firing A Whistleblower
The Ninth Circuit unanimously concluded that a trustee and lawyer for certain multiemployer funds violated ERISA § 510 by unlawfully firing a whistleblower in the funds’ collections department, but, in a split decision, concluded that the retaliation did not amount to a breach of fiduciary duty. The whistleblower was cooperating with a DOL criminal investigation…
ERISA Section 510 Interference Claim Time Barred
A federal magistrate judge in Pennsylvania recommended that a class action complaint claiming that AlliedBarton terminated certain employees to prevent them from reaching eligibility for vacation benefits be dismissed as untimely. Observing that ERISA section 510 does not provide a specific statute of limitations, the court determined that the most analogous state-law cause of action…
Court Declines to Decide Whether ERISA Protects Employee From Reprisal For Informal Complaint
A federal court in Missouri was asked to determine whether a former employee proved a viable claim for retaliation under ERISA Section 510 by virtue of being terminated after she sent emails disparaging the company’s owner and protesting certain actions. As applicable here, Section 510 prohibits employers from terminating an employee “because he has given…