Sally L. Conkright, et al. v. Paul J. Frommert et al. (559 U.S. 506)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided April 21, 2010 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 559 U.S. 506 · 130 S. Ct. 1640
- Decided
- April 21, 2010
- Term
- October Term 2009
- Vote
- 5–3
- Majority author
- Justice Roberts
- Issue area
- Economic Activity
- Disposition
- Reversed and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Chief Justice Roberts delivered the opinion of the Court. People make mistakes. Even administrators of ERISA plans. That should come as no surprise, given that the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 is “an enormously complex and detailed statute,” Mertens v. Hewitt Associates, 508 U. S. 248, 262 (1998), and the plans that administrators must construe can be lengthy and complicated. (The one at issue here runs to 81 pages, with 139 sections.) We held in Firestone Tire & Rubber Co. v. Bruch, 489 U. S. 101 (1989), that an ERISA plan administrator with discretionary authority to interpret a plan is entitled to deference in exercising that discretion. The question here is whether a single honest mistake in plan interpretation justifies stripping the administrator of that deference for subsequent related interpretations of the plan. We hold that it does not. I As in many ERISA matters, the facts of this case are exceedingly complicated. Fortunately, most of the factual details are unnecessary to the legal issues before us, so we cover them only in broad strokes. This case concerns Xerox Corporation’s pension plan, which is covered by ERISA, 88 Stat. 829, as amended, 29 U. S. C. § 1001 et seq. Petitioners are the plan itself (hereinafter Plan), and the Plan’s current and former administrators (hereinafter Plan Administrator). See § 1002(16)(A)(i); App. 32a. Respondents…
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