Labor, Employment & OSHA: ERISA
Our ERISA lawyers regularly advise clients on benefit issues related to ERISA and other statutes that regulate defined benefit pension plans, health and welfare plans, executive deferred compensation programs, severance programs, and fringe benefit plans.
Counseling Work
How We Help
- Design and draft all types of employee benefit plans, and advise both for-profit and nonprofit clients on compliance rules.
- Develop practical solutions for fixing broken plans through self-correction or voluntary government submissions.
- Have extensive knowledge of the Internal Revenue Code, Department of Labor regulations and all other laws relating to employee benefits.
- Assist clients with voluntary compliance audits, as well as government audits.
- Advise clients on governance and fiduciary issues related to their employee benefits plans.
- Handle pension and welfare benefit plan matters on behalf of employers, plan fiduciaries, and sometimes the plans themselves.
- Serve as outside counsel to sponsors of many large and small multiemployer, multiple employer and single-employer plans, and also serve as plan counsel to a number of pension and health plans, some of them governmental plans.
Litigation Work
We have witnessed an explosion in litigation involving employee benefit plans in recent years - including class actions - and there is no sign that this trend is letting up. Plaintiffs’ class action lawyers are constantly “trawling the waters” for new kinds of ERISA actions to file. The cash balance plan age discrimination cases of yesterday are giving way to today’s securities lending and excessive fee cases, and the ever present stock drop cases.
The way to mount a successful defense in complicated ERISA litigation is with attorneys who have the substantive knowledge of employee benefits law and the litigation skills and experience to be able to put that knowledge to work. Our ERISA litigation attorneys possess that critical blend of knowledge and experience.
How We Help
- Experienced in all aspects of ERISA litigation, as well as litigation under the Internal Revenue Code, the Bankruptcy Code, the Family and Medical Leave Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, and other laws affecting employee benefit plans.
- Have handled a wide variety of benefit issues arising under these statutes in connection with defined benefit pension plans (including cash balance plans), defined contribution pension plans, ESOPs, and health and welfare plans.
- We are particularly suited to handle complex benefit issues faced by companies that are confronting bankruptcy or are in financial distress.
- Regularly help companies navigate this specialized area of the employee benefits world, both as special pension counsel in bankruptcy cases and outside of bankruptcy.