ERISA Litigation: How Low Will 'They' Go?
The ERISA litigation field in recent years has seen copycat filings, plagiarism in pleadings, factual flaws, and misleading assertions—but to my eyes, we’ve just hit a new low. I’m speaking of what appears to be a new strategy, at least in this area of the law. Specifically, a California law firm by the name of Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein is in the midst of what appears to be a pre-trial “shakedown.” More specifically—brought to my attention by Daniel Aronowitz (writing for The Fid Guru Blog )—Leiff Cabraser is currently engaged in a letter writing campaign to plan sponsors, alerting them to a series of assertions about ERISA litigation, allegations about the fees paid by participants in their plans (relative to a standard that has been repeatedly criticized in that context at trial)—all alongside the fact that they’ve allegedly found an as-yet-unnamed plaintiff-participant in the plan in question that is said to be willing to represent a class action allegi...