Darkness at Noon: Judicial Interpretation May Have Made Things Worse for Benefit Plan Participants under ERISA than Had the Statute Never Been Enacted

Authors

Andrew Stumpff, University of Michigan Law School

First Page

221

Document Type

Article

Abstract

Courts have constricted the rights of employee benefit plan participants under ERISA in a number of ways, the most prominent of which are catalogued in Part III below. The cumulative effect of these decisions, however, can only be appreciated by taking them together - by considering the overall position of a plan participant under ERISA, as interpreted, relative to the participant's position had ERISA not been enacted. That task is undertaken in Parts IV and later parts of the article. The review of ERISA case law in this article is intended only as a survey: Much more has been written on the individual issues raised below than is recounted here.14 References are included to provide the interested reader with an embarkation point for further investigation, but the author's immediate objective is to identify these various judicial trends in one place, to convey how cumulatively devastating to employee benefit plan participants they have now proved.

Recommended Citation

Andrew Stumpff, Darkness at Noon: Judicial Interpretation May Have Made Things Worse for Benefit Plan Participants under ERISA than Had the Statute Never Been Enacted, 23 St. Thomas L. Rev. 221 (2011).
Available at: https://scholarship.stu.edu/stlr/vol23/iss2/3