Deals & People May 25, 2010

Great West Hires Director for Southeast Sales Post

Great-West Retirement Services has appointed Gary Plourde, former Great-West sales manager, as regional director of national accounts for its Southeast market.
Reported by

The firm said Plourde will report to Pete Margiotta, national sales director.

In this newly created position, Plourde, based near Orlando, is responsible for sales of retirement plans to sponsors of 401(k), 401(a), 403(b) and non-governmental 457 retirement plans in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Virginia, Delaware and Washington, D.C.

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Plourde rejoins Great-West Retirement Services from DailyAccess Corporation, where he served as senior vice president of sales and distribution, overseeing all sales and marketing efforts. Prior to joining DailyAccess last year, he spent nearly nine years at SunTrust bank in Orlando, serving as senior vice president, national sales manager.

Compliance May 24, 2010

Supreme Court Sets Standard for ERISA Attorney Fees

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday set a new standard for litigants suing under Section 502(g)(1) of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) to be awarded attorneys’ fees.
Reported by

Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the court in Hardt v. Reliance Standard Life Insurance Co., ruled that the person only has to achieve “some degree of success on the merits (of the case)” and not meet the higher standard of being a “prevailing party” to be eligible for the attorneys’ fees award at the court’s discretion.

Thomas pointed out that not only does the ERISA section not include the words “prevailing party,” nothing else limits attorneys’ fee awards in that way. In fact, the section gives the court discretion to award such fees to either party.

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The opinion draws a distinction with the language of another provision governing attorneys’ fee awards in certain multiemployer plan cases which limit such awards only to those who win a judgment in favor of the plan.   “The contrast between these two paragraphs makes clear that Congress knows how to impose express limits on the availability of attorney’s fees in ERISA cases,” Thomas wrote in the ruling.

Citing a 1983 Supreme Court case, the Thomas opinion explained that a litigant claiming attorneys’ fees does not satisfy the “ some degree of success” requirement by achieving “trivial success on the merits” but does satisfy it if the court can fairly call the outcome of the litigation some success on the merits without conducting a “lengthy inquir[y] into the question whether a particular party’s success was ‘substantial’ or occurred on a ‘central issue.’”

The case involved a legal battle between Bridget Hardt, a former executive assistant to the president of textile manufacturer Dan River Inc., and Reliance Standard Life Insurance Company over the denial of disability benefits for Hardt. While the company administered the Dan River’s Group Long-Term Disability Insurance Program Plan, Reliance decided whether an employee qualified for benefits and underwrote any such benefit award.

Hardt was granted attorneys’ fees by a federal trial court judge who said she had put forward “compelling evidence” of her disability from carpal tunnel and other ailments, but a federal appellate court threw out that decision.  The Supreme Court reversed the appellate ruling and sent the case back to the lower court for further proceedings.

The Supreme Court ruling is here.  

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