ERISA and Employee Benefits

Our attorneys practice extensively in the welfare benefit field, regularly analyzing complex issues, including nondiscrimination rules, permitted mid-year election changes, and compliance with federal mandates such as COBRA, HIPAA, FMLA and the Medicare Secondary Payer Rules.

Shifting Strategies   

The risk of litigation across the employee benefits marketplace is accelerating. Evolving case law, market volatility, and increased scrutiny on health care costs is having an explosive effect on ERISA benefits litigation as the wave of high-stakes claims and sophisticated tactics continues to exert pressure on managed care companies. Our ERISA litigation team has decades of experience working closely with in-house counsel and other key stakeholders in this highly complicated and granular litigation subspeciality to help shift and protect their defensive strategies. 

Sector Strengths

GrayRobinson collaborates with insurance companies and third-party administrators to mitigate risk and guard against individual payor-provider disputes and class actions involving group and individual life, health, and disability policies. Our trusted team of experienced litigators represents several of the largest carriers in the country at both the trial and appellate levels, and in administrative and arbitral proceedings.

We advise and defend clients facing complex ERISA litigation involving medical and disability benefits, fiduciary responsibility, prohibited transactions, retiree medical obligations, commercial transactions, and ERISA's preemption of state law. Working to maximize subrogation and reimbursement rights, we help clients navigate the unique standards of review that govern ERISA claim disputes and also manage disputes stemming from agreements between benefit plans and third party administrators, as well as nonparticipating provider claims.

Our team delivers cost-efficient counseling, while fully developing all available legal defenses. We have handled hundreds of participating and nonparticipating provider claims on behalf of our insurance clients, and are highly attuned to the trends, decisions, and evolving jurisprudence impacting providers and the employee benefits industry as a whole.

Multidisciplinary Team

Members of our ERISA litigation team have served as lead counsel for numerous class actions and individual claims. The team is bolstered by our leading corporate, employee benefits, health care, and managed care practices with broadly developed experience in the design, drafting, implementation, and operation of health, life, and disability plans and procedures. We represent dozens of plans maintained by publicly traded and privately held, tax-exempt, and governmental employers.
 

Because we represent numerous large employers, we have a significant practice in the area of nonqualified deferred compensation. This has been a very active practice area due to the enactment of relatively recent legislation (e.g., IRC §409A). We believe that we were among the first in Florida to provide comprehensive counsel with respect to plan design options available to sponsors or potential sponsors of nonqualified deferred compensation arrangements subject to these new requirements.

Our Employee Benefit attorneys have significant experience with respect to pension and 457(b) plans maintained by governmental entities.  Governmental plans are not subject to ERISA and the federal tax rules that apply to these arrangements are significantly different than the requirements applicable to private sector programs.  In addition, because these arrangements are exempt from ERISA, they are subject to various state law requirements.  Our Chair, Rick Burke, has extensive experience in this area.  In fact, the large majority of his practice involves governmental plans.  Mr. Burke is a frequent speaker on these issues for the Florida Public Pension Trustees Association and the Florida Division of Retirement’s Annual Police Officers’ and Firefighters’ Pension Trustees’ School.

Due to the proliferation of 401(k) plans over the past 20 years, designing, implementing and advising these arrangements constitute the largest part of our practice. We represent over 200 401(k) plans, including numerous arrangements maintained by very large employers. Recently, 401(k) plans have received a tremendous amount of publicity resulting from fiduciary responsibility litigation. We have been very active in implementing practices and procedures designed to promote compliance with the applicable fiduciary standards. A large portion of our 401(k) plan practice involves resolving qualification issues arising as a result of corporate mergers and/or acquisitions. This is an extremely complicated area due, in part, to the paucity of clarifying administrative pronouncements. Our Chair, attorney Rick Burke, has extensive experience in this area resulting from his longtime representation of several large, national publicly, traded companies.

Our ESOP practice is one of the strongest in the state of Florida. In the past 10 years we have been involved in the establishment of many new ESOPs, with the result that we have a number of continuing ESOP clients. Companies whose ESOPs we helped establish over the past 10 year have total value approaching 1 billion. Our ESOP practice is led by David Ottinger who is regularly assisted by members of the employee benefits and corporate groups.

We have depth of experience and have worked extensively with retirement plans and nonqualified deferred compensation arrangements sponsored by nonprofit, governmental, and religiously-affiliated organizations.