Mercer Select US - Claim for fiduciary breach can’t rest on oral statements altering plan terms, appeals court rules

The content you are trying to access is available only to members of certain Select membership offerings.

For an overview of Mercer Select and all of its membership offerings, click here. If you're interested in additional Select membership offerings, contact your Mercer consultant or Customer Service.

Using "Acting as"

The "Acting as" feature on Mercer Select allows Mercer employees to see Select in the same way as Mercer clients and contacts who are members of one or more of the Select offerings. Simply use the pulldown menu on the top of every Mercer Select page, choose which of the common membership roles you want to play, and view the content in the same way as a member of that offering (or group of offerings).

Like some Mercer Select members, you may encounter content that is available only to certain membership offerings. In this case, you will be directed to a screen with a message explaining what steps you can take to view the content. As a Mercer employee, all you'll have to do is switch your role back to the Acting as Consultant role to see the content.

If your clients and contacts encounter Select content they can't access, you may be able to give them access by making them members of additional Select membership offerings. Please contact Select customer service for help.

You can gain access to all Mercer Select content - including internal-only content - by setting your "Acting as" role to "Consultant."

For an overview of Mercer Select and its membership offerings, go to our Overview.

Claim for fiduciary breach can’t rest on oral statements altering plan terms, appeals court rules

A claim for breach of fiduciary duty cannot be based on oral statements that would alter an ERISA plan document, the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled (Ladouceur v. Credit Lyonnais). Participants were allegedly told that pension accruals after a company merger would take into account pre-merger service, when in fact accruals were based solely on post-merger service. Since an oral statement cannot change the written terms of an ERISA plan, the court reasoned, ”we see no reason to give the statement effect by re-characterizing it as a breach of fiduciary duty.” (Select News, 8 Oct 2009)

Full text of 2d Circuit's decision in Ladouceur v. Credit Lyonnais (30 Sept 2009) (PDF)

Global

Home

About Mercer Select

Overview

Mercer Offerings

To learn about other Mercer offerings, check out these Mercer sites:
Mercer.com: Mercer's flagship site
iMercer.com: Survey data and analysis