Nevin's Data "Points"

This past weekend was Parent’s Weekend at the college where my eldest has now been in residence for the last two months. We’d had a great weekend, but as we went to check out of the hotel, I noticed that the final charges were considerably more than the rate we had been quoted when we made our reservations. Setting aside for the moment concerns that my 14-year-old had discovered the wonders of pay-per-view, closer scrutiny yielded the number I had anticipated—our room charge. But also included in the charges I was now expected to pay were a room tax, a city tax, and an occupancy sales tax. I suppose one could hardly fault the hotel for those additional charges – they had, after all, provided the room and facilities to my family for the agreed upon rate. I’ll bet that somewhere on their Web site, or perhaps even on the form I signed at registration, the existence of these additional taxes was acknowledged. However, I’m reasonably certain that the hotel was happy to have me think I was g...

Last week, the elementary schools in Attleboro, Massachusetts, gained a bit of notoriety for their decision to ban kids from playing tag (more specifically, any unsupervised “chase” game). They weren’t the first to do so, but headlines like “Tag, You’re Out!” are just too tempting for journalists to turn their backs on. And, let’s face it, the notion of tag being “outlawed” is the kind of “you’ve got to be kidding me” story that people will read. The reason for the ban is simple: Recess is "a time when accidents can happen," was a quote attributed to Willett Elementary School Principal Gaylene Heppe, who approved the ban. Having had a dangerous encounter of my own on the school playground during sixth-grade recess (I still have the scars), I can attest to the veracity of the concern. Of course, no one really thinks this is about children’s safety. We all know – and, unfortunately, understand - that it’s about the lawsuits that such accidents will almost certainly engende...

Last week, participants who had brought a company stock suit against their employer won a settlement. No real surprise there, you say? Well, actually, in approving the relatively modest $11 million settlement in the case of In re: Broadwing, Inc. ERISA Litigation, the court essentially said that plaintiffs should take the money and be glad they could get it—since their odds of winning (“prevailing on the merits” in legalspeak) were uncertain.* Now, admittedly, that might be something of an overstatement. In approving the settlement, the court basically did what courts are supposed to do in approving a settlement—they ran down a checklist of things that purport to establish that the settlement is fair, particularly in a class action, where most of the plaintiffs aren’t in the courtroom. And one of the conclusions courts are basically required to draw in approving such settlements is that it represents the best deal for a plaintiff under the circumstances. In Broadwing, the action w...

Last week, another court rejected claims that a cash balance plan was age discriminatory (see “Cash Balance Plan Not in Breach of Age Discrimination Laws” ), though you could perhaps be excused for not noticing that result. In fact, my guess is that a random sampling of the adviser universe would reveal two things about cash balance plans: first, a great ignorance about what they are and how they work (see links below); and second, a general sense that they represent an illegal plan design. Over the past several years, the conversion – and litigation experience – of a single plan – IBM - has dominated the media’s coverage of these programs. Along the way, Congress has cut off funding for the Department of Labor to issue clarifying regulations on these programs (led by Congressman Bernie Saunders, I-Vermont, in whose state IBM is the largest employer), and the IRS quit issuing determination letters on these plans (basically an approval by the IRS that the plan document passes muster). T...