ERISA Suit Against UPS Refiled in District Court - Plan Adviser
Participants and beneficiaries in the pension plan of the United Parcel Service of America have refiled an Employee Retirement Income Security Act lawsuit against the company in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.The new complaint represents the plaintiffs’ second try in arguing their case. It closely represents their original complaint, filed in early 2020, but features some important changes.
The plaintiffs suggest that UPS pension plan fiduciaries committed multiple ERISA breaches while calculating the value of joint and survivor annuity benefits to be paid out of the company’s pension plan relative to the value of the plan’s standard single life annuity option. Plaintiffs in such cases say the defendants have failed to pay JSA benefits in amounts that are “actuarially equivalent” to a standard SLA benefit. Such actuarial equivalence is required by ERISA.
The first ruling in the case, filed in late August 2020, sided firmly with the UPS defendants in rejecting the lawsuit. Despite the complexity of the issues at hand, the decision numbered just 20 pages, and it focused exclusively on the fact that the plaintiffs did not exhaust all the potential administrative remedies, which the court determined they must first explore before litigation would be appropriate.
