Varity Corporation v. Charles Howe et al. (516 U.S. 489)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided March 19, 1996 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 516 U.S. 489 · 116 S. Ct. 1065
- Decided
- March 19, 1996
- Term
- October Term 1995
- Vote
- 6–3
- Majority author
- Justice Breyer
- Issue area
- Economic Activity
- Disposition
- Affirmed
- Outcome
- Petitioning party lost
- Ideological direction
- Liberal
Opinion excerpt
Justice Breyer delivered the opinion of the Court. A group of beneficiaries of a firm’s employee welfare benefit plan, protected by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), 88 Stat. 832, as amended, 29 U. S. C. § 1001 et seq. (1988 ed.), have sued their plan’s administrator, who was also their employer. They claim that the administrator, through trickery, led them to withdraw from the plan and to forfeit their benefits. They seek, among other things, an order that, in essence, would reinstate each of them as a participant in the employer’s ERISA plan. The lower courts entered judgment in the employees’ favor, and we agreed to review that judgment. In conducting our review, we do not question the lower courts’ findings of serious deception by the employer, but instead consider three legal questions. First, in the factual circumstances (as determined by the lower courts), was the employer acting in its capacity as an ERISA “fiduciary” when it significantly and deliberately misled the beneficiaries? Second, in misleading the beneficiaries, did the employer violate the fiduciary obligations that ERISA §404 imposes upon plan administrators? Third, does ERISA § 502(a)(3) authorize ERISA plan beneficiaries to bring a lawsuit, such as this one, that seeks relief for individual beneficiaries harmed by an administrator’s breach of fiduciary obligations? We answer…
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