California Insurance Litigation Blog

In the last several years, the scope of discovery in ERISA cases has been a point of contention between plaintiff and defense counsel.  Plaintiffs typically want free range to conduct discovery on any potentially relevant information addressing the conflict of interest issue while defense counsel would like discovery requests to be as narrow as possible.  Generally, discovery in ERISA cases is limited to what was before the plan administrator at the time the claim decision was made.  In other words, the administrative record.  However, in 2008, the Supreme Court in Metropolitan Life Ins. Co. v. Glenn, 554 U.S. 105 (2008)... More

The federal courts have for a long time struggled with how to apply the deferential standard of review to actions taken by ERISA plan administrators in light of the United States Supreme Court holding in Firestone Tire & Rubber Co. v. Bruch, 489 U.S. 101 (1989).  Firestone held that an ERISA plan administrator with discretionary authority to interpret a plan is entitled to deference in exercising that discretion.  Courts have reached different results on an important issue: is a plan administrator that incorrectly interprets a plan document still entitled to an abuse of discretion standard of review when courts review... More