In this case, a TPA was sued by their clients (employers and those employer’s employees), for mishandling their plans’ funds. The TPA trustees in turn hoped to sue their attorney, claiming that their attorney should have notified them of the fund management issues and improper expenditures. The court found that the attorney did not have discretionary control over the assets of the plan, access to funds, or powers to administer the plans, and was therefore not a fiduciary. Even if the attorney knew of the transactions and failed to disclose them, the fund trustees would be unable to demonstrate how the attorney’s actions or lack of action proximately caused the mismanagement of the funds.

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This entry was posted by Adam V. Russo on Wednesday, April 4th, 2007 at 4:40 pm and is filed under ERISA, Fiduciary Liability, Third Party Administrators. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.