Justices OK Individual ERISA Suits in Landmark Ruling

February 20, 2008 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - In a landmark ruling eagerly awaited by the retirement services community, the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday declared that defined contribution participants can bring fiduciary breach suits to recover individual damages.

Handing down the decision in LaRue v. DeWolff, justices declared that the continuing transition from   defined benefit pensions to defined contribution programs made it appropriate to lift the prohibition againstindividual recoveries under502(a)(2) imposed in a 1985 case. Justices David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, and Samuel Alito joined with John Paul Stevens who wrote Wednesday's majority opinion.

"A fair contextual reading of (the Employee Retirement Income Security Act) makes it abundantly clear that its draftsmen were primarily concerned with the possible misuse of plan assets, and with remedies that would protect the entire plan, rather than with the rights of an individual beneficiary." the Supreme Court wrote in the 1985 case.

However, Stevens wrote that, the current retirement landscape with a strong weighting of 401(k) programs now made it necessary to rethink that legal approach.   "Defined contribution plans dominate the retirement plan scene today," the opinion said.

"For defined contribution plans, however, fiduciary misconduct need not threaten the entire plan's solvency to reduce benefits below the amount that participants would otherwise receive. Whether a fiduciary breach diminishes plan assets payable to all participants or only to particular individuals, it creates the kind of harms that concerned (ERISA Section) 409's draftsmen," Stevens wrote.

Focusing only on potential planwide damages in the modern 401(k)-centric environment is "beside the point," he said.

The majority argued there are also ERISA indications that individual claims should be permitted, including the all-important safe harbor provisions. "Most significant is 404(c), which exempts fiduciaries from liability for losses caused by participants' exercise of control over assets in their individual accounts," Stevens declared. "This provision would serve no real purpose if, as respondents argue, fiduciaries never had any liability for losses in an individual account."