The Employee Retirement Security Act – Is a comprehensive highly reticulated federal statute enacted to protect the interests of employees who participate in the employers’ pension plans and welfare benefit plans.

While there are solid arguments to be advanced that ERISA has achieved its laudable goal of protecting valuable pension and retirement plans, it has had the opposite effect on disappointed plan beneficiaries seeking to enforce their rights to compensation under their employer sponsored health, severance, life insurance and long term disability plans.

Disappointed plan beneficiaries seeking to enforce their rights in federal court will find that they are fighting with one hand tied behind their back. Federal courts refuse to allow jury trials, trials and discovery in ERISA governed litigations and will frequently limit their review to a claim file compiled by an insurance company and review the plan administrator’s adverse benefit determination under the arbitrary and capricious or deferential standard of review.

Recently the Department of Labor amended the regulation regulating fair claims procedures for employer welfare benefit plans giving aggrieved claimants and beneficiaries improved due process for administratively appealing and, ultimately, litigating their denied employee welfare benefit claims.