Good morning, ERISA Watchers!  You may remember the case last year involving a group of Maine dairy delivery drivers who received $5 million in a proposed settlement all due to a missing oxford comma.  (A lack of an Oxford comma cost dairy $5 million.)  In this week’s notable decision, Tyll v. Stanley Black & Decker Life Insurance Program et al., 2019 WL 3081061 (D. Conn. July 12, 2019), it is Federal Insurance Company getting an expensive lesson in policy drafting.

Tyll involves a claim for accidental death and dismemberment insurance benefits.  Ms. Tyll’s late husband was a participant in the Stanley Black & Decker Life Insurance Program which offered, among other benefits, a Business Travel Accident Insurance Program (“the Policy”).  Mr. Tyll died while on board a commercial flight from Paris to New York.  At the time of his death, he was earning a salary of more than one million per year.  Federal Insurance Company, which insures the benefit, initially denied that Ms. Tyll was entitled to any benefit and denied her claim on December 11, 2014.  By April 17, 2017, it reversed its position on her entitlement to benefits but it claimed that Tyll is entitled to benefits capped at one million.  Ms. Tyll argued that she was entitled to a cap of five million. Continue Reading Say What You Mean or Pay What you Say: Federal Insurance Company’s Four-Million-Dollar Lesson

This week’s notable decision is Wilson v. Safelite Grp., Inc., No. 18-3408, __F.3d__, 2019 WL 3000995 (6th Cir. July 10, 2019), where the Sixth Circuit answers the question of what constitutes an employee pension benefit plan under ERISA.  At issue is a deferred compensation plan for executive employees that the district court determined to be an employee pension benefit plan under 29 U.S.C. § 1002(2)(A)(ii) and not a bonus plan exempted from ERISA under 29 C.F.R. § 2510.3-2(c).  Analyzing the plain text of ERISA and the bonus plan regulation, the Sixth Circuit affirmed the district court’s decision. Continue Reading Sixth Circuit Finds that Deferred Compensation Plan for Executive Employees is an Employee Pension Benefit Plan

Good morning, ERISA Watchers!  Now that USA has just won its fourth FIFA Women’s World Cup title, I’m bringing you more good news in this week’s notable decision:  Cunningham, et al. v. Wawa, Inc., et al., No. 2:18-cv-03355-PD (E.D. Pa. July 2, 2019).  In Cunningham, the court granted Plaintiffs’ motion to certify a class of Employee Stock Ownership Plan (“ESOP”) participants.  In their ten-count complaint, Plaintiffs claim that Defendant Wawa violated ERISA in several ways by amending the ESOP in a manner which took away their right to hold Wawa stock through age 68 and forced them to sell their shares at an unfair price.  Plaintiffs moved to certify a class and two subclasses of over one thousand participants who were adversely impacted by the amendments.   Continue Reading Court Holds that Detrimental Reliance Is Not Needed for Class-Wide Relief and Certifies ESOP Class