Harris Trust and Savings Bank, Etc., et al. v. Salomon Smith Barney Inc., et al. (530 U.S. 238)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided June 12, 2000 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 530 U.S. 238 · 120 S. Ct. 2180
- Decided
- June 12, 2000
- Term
- October Term 1999
- Vote
- 9–0
- Majority author
- Justice Thomas
- Issue area
- Economic Activity
- Disposition
- Reversed and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Liberal
Opinion excerpt
Justice Thomas delivered the opinion of the Court. Section 406(a) of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), 88 Stat. 879, bars a fiduciary of an employee benefit plan from causing the plan to engage in certain transactions with a “party in interest.” 29 U. S. C. § 1106(a). Section 502(a)(3) authorizes a “participant, beneficiary, or fiduciary” of a plan to bring a civil aetion to obtain “appropriate equitable relief” to redress violations of ERISA Title I. 29 U. S. C. § 1132(a)(3). The question is whether that authorization extends to a suit against a non-fiduciary “party in interest” to a transaction barred by § 406(a). We hold that it does. I Responding to deficiencies in prior law regulating transactions by plan fiduciaries, Congress enacted ERISA § 406(a)(1), which supplements the fiduciary’s general duty of loyalty to the plan’s beneficiaries, § 404(a), by categorically barring certain transactions deemed “likely to injure the pension plan,” Commissioner v. Keystone Consol. Industries, Inc., 508 U. S. 152, 160 (1993). Section 406(a)(1) provides, among other things, that “[a] fiduciary with respect to a plan shall not cause the plan to engage in a transaction, if he knows or should know that such transaction constitutes a direct or indirect. . . sale or exchange ... of any property between the plan and a party in interest.” 29 U. S. C. §…
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