ERISA claim doesn’t tell rest of story

Trial Notebook

By Steven P. Garmisa

Hoey & Farina

Posted March 11, 2020 3:51 PM

Distinguishing between Employee Retirement Income Security Act, or ERISA, benefits cases that are governed by the arbitrary-and-capricious standard of review (with judges generally not looking beyond the evidence considered by the ERISA administrator) and “ERISA de novo review” — which is a “misleading phrase,” the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals confessed, because “what happened before the plan administrator is irrelevant in a de novo review case” and judges don’t perform …

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