ERISA Appellate Litigation

• Engers v. AT&T, No. 10-2752 (3d Cir. June 22, 2011). The Third Circuit affirmed the district court’s award of summary judgment to our clients on all counts in a class action and collective action arising out of a cash balance conversion, in which plan participants alleged age discrimination under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act and various violations of ERISA’s benefit accrual and disclosure requirements.
• Pegram v. Herdrich, 530 U.S. 211 (2000). In this landmark case, the U.S. Supreme Court held that a health maintenance organization’s treatment decisions were not fiduciary in nature under ERISA.
• AT&T Corp. v. Hulteen, No. 07-543 (2007). The U.S. Supreme Court held that our client AT&T did not violate the Pregnancy Discrimination Act when it did not credit years of service under its pension plan for rehired employees who took maternity leaves before the effective date of the Act. The Court ruled that AT&T’s policy of granting limited service credit for maternity leaves prior to 1979 was lawful when the policy was in effect.
• Systems Council EM-3 v. AT&T Corp., 159 F.3d 1376 (1998).The D.C. Circuit affirmed the dismissal of claims against AT&T for allegedly violating fiduciary duties by allocating pension and welfare plan assets to plans established by Lucent Technologies, Inc. in connection with AT&T’s spin-off of Lucent. We successfully argued that AT&T was not acting as an ERISA fiduciary when it allocated the assets and liabilities.
• Fry v. Exelon Corp. Cash Balance Pension Plan, 571 F.3d 644 (7th Cir. 2009). Sidley won significant victories in an ERISA case for Exelon Corporation in the Northern District of Illinois and the Seventh Circuit. Exelon was the defendant in a closely watched case involving the concept of “normal retirement age.” This case was the second to address this issue. In the first, the defendants lost. Sidley successfully argued that the court in the Exelon case should not follow the first opinion and should find in favor of Exelon.
• Walker v. Monsanto Co., 614 F.3d 415 (7th Cir 2010), cert denied, 2011 WL 940902 (2011). Sidley successfully defended a Pfizer cash balance plan against claims that an early retirement feature of the plan resulted in age discrimination against older workers.
• Hurlic v. Southern California Gas Co., 539 F.3d 1024 (9th Cir. 2008). Sidley won a high-profile challenge to a cash balance plan adopted by the Southern California Gas Company, a subsidiary of Sempra Energy. The appeal was closely watched because the plan at issue has features that are common to hundreds of cash balance plans across the country.
• Peterson v. AT&T Corp., 127 Fed. Appx. 67 (3d Cir. 2005).The Third Circuit ruled in favor of our client AT&T in an ERISA class action in which plaintiffs, former employees of AT&T, claimed that the company breached its fiduciary duties by failing to inform them before they retired that AT&T might make changes to its retirement package.
• Brown v. Owens Corning Investment Review Committee, 622 F.3d 564 (6th Cir. 2010). The Court of Appeals upheld judgment in favor of our clients based on the expiration of the statute of limitations.
• Pugh v. Tribune Company, 521 F.3d 686 (7th Cir. 2008). The firm represented Tribune Company in a class action that was filed on behalf of the company’s 401(k) plans and their participants. The Seventh Circuit held that “ERISA imposes no duty on plan fiduciaries to continuously audit operational affairs” and rejected each of plaintiffs’ theories of liability.