Steptoe & Johnson’s Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation Team offers customized legal services to clients on all facets of employee benefits and compensation law.

Group lawyers are experienced in both tax and non-tax aspects of compliance issues, client counseling, fiduciary issues, IRS, DOL, PBGC administrative proceedings and litigation.  The group partners with other Steptoe & Johnson attorneys to assist clients with corporate transactions, litigation, reductions in force and taxation of settlements.

Steptoe & Johnson has uncommon capabilities with respect to ERISA litigation and class action issues.  ERISA litigation can be difficult to navigate due to ERISA’s procedural requirements.  Practitioners and consultants familiar with employee plans are typically not litigators.  The Steptoe & Johnson ERISA team offers the best of all worlds, lawyers who are equally comfortable with ERISA substantive law (including labor and tax aspects), the Federal Rules of Civil and Appellate Procedure, and the practical business aspects of employee benefit plans.  The firm’s ERISA litigation practice profits from in-depth knowledge and hands-on experience with ERISA substantive law and litigation that allows us to posture an ERISA case in ways that provide an early advantage to litigation clients.  In addition, our ERISA team has significant class action experience and labor law experience, including experience with union arbitration and litigation.

ERISA Litigation Experience

Members of the team are experienced litigators. Team members have been involved in the following broad categories of ERISA litigation:

• Litigation Variety
  Sara Hauptfuehrer has represented insurers, plans, plan sponsors, and fiduciaries in a number of lawsuits involving benefit claims, subrogation, violations of § 510 of ERISA, and breaches of fiduciary duty.  The team has been involved in ERISA litigation in both state and federal court, at both the trial and appellate levels. 
• Class Action Litigation
  Sara Hauptfuehrer has significant ERISA class action experience.  The group recently settled a potential ERISA class action, alleging investment mismanagement and federal securities violations against a major financial institution and its officers, where a major objective was avoiding adverse publicity. Settlement was approximately ten percent of estimated fiduciary liability.  
• HIPAA Litigation
  The ERISA team regularly advises clients on various aspects of HIPAA litigation.  Brad Shafer and Eric Hulett presented the HIPAA Litigation Update at the Tenth National HIPAA Summit. 
• Employment Cases
  The ERISA team regularly assists firm lawyers in addressing ERISA issues that arise as a part of employment cases.

Transactional ERISA Experience

• General Benefits Practice
  The group regularly advises clients on various aspects of employee benefit plans, and other employee fringe benefits.  This includes advice on tax laws, ERISA, the Americans with Disabilities Act, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, and other state and federal laws as they relate to employee benefit plans.  
• Health Plans
  Lawyers regularly advise clients on issues related to HIPAA discrimination, HIPAA privacy, subrogation, COBRA, coordination of benefits, and the interaction of state insurance law and ERISA.  We also advise clients regularly on a variety of retiree medical benefits, including an employer’s right to terminate plans or reduce benefits, establishing and funding retiree benefits, union contract negotiations and related tax and labor law issues. 
• LMRA
  The team is accomplished in benefits aspects of the Labor Management Relations Act and its intersection with ERISA.  As necessary, they can draw on the expertise of numerous labor lawyers and litigators.