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Farrell Fritz, P.C.

Rochelle Laufer Joins Farrell Fritz, P.C. as Counsel
Rochelle Laufer has joined Farrell Fritz, P.C. as Counsel in the Real Estate Department.

Ms. Laufer brings 20 years of legal experience to the firm. From 2002 to 2006, she served as General Counsel and Senior Vice President at The Treeline Companies (Garden City), a real estate firm with holdings of approximately two million rentable square feet of office space in the New York tri-state area. In this position, Ms. Laufer’s responsibilities encompassed all aspects of ownership and operation of office buildings, including preparing and negotiating leases and commission agreements; sale, purchase and financing of office buildings and landlord-tenant matters.

During her career, Ms. Laufer has held positions at three New York City and Long Island-based law firms, including Mineola-based Forchelli, Curto, Schwartz, Mineo, Carlino & Cohn, LLP (1997 – 2002). From 1991 to 1997, she was Associate General Counsel, Vice President at The Dime Savings Bank of New York.

Ms. Laufer received her J. D., with honors, in 1986 from The National Law Center, George Washington University. She earned her B. A. in Psychology, magna cum laude, in 1983 from City University of New York/Brooklyn College.

08-15-2006

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Greenebaum Doll & McDonald PLLC

Jacqueline C. Kingsolver Joins Greenebaum Doll & McDonald PLLC
Greenebaum Doll & McDonald PLLC is proud to announce that Jacqueline C. Kingsolver, a veteran health law attorney, has joined the firm’s Louisville office as Of Counsel on the Health, Health Insurance and Life Sciences Team.

Prior to joining Greenebaum, Kingsolver served as Vice President and Associate General Counsel at Norton Healthcare in Louisville. She has more than 25 years experience in health law, both private practice and in-house at hospitals.

Kingsolver has served numerous community organizations including as current chairperson of the Board of Greenways of Oldham County. Previous appointments include Board Member of Project Women, Co-Chair of the Centre College Parents Committee, and Board of Directors of the Owensboro Symphony. She is past president of Hospice Association, Inc. and a graduate of Leadership Owensboro.

She received her undergraduate degree from Centre College of Kentucky and law degree from the University of Louisville School of Law.

08-15-2006

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Holland & Hart, L.L.P.

New Developments in Cash Balance and Other Hybrid Plans: The Pension Protection Act and the Cooper Case
The newly-enacted Pension Protection Act of 2006 (the “Act”) includes significant prospective relief for sponsors of cash balance and other “hybrid” plans. In addition, a week prior to the passage of the Act, the Seventh Circuit issued a decision in Cooper v. IBM Personal Pension Plan regarding age discrimination in cash balance plans. Taken together, the Act and the Cooper case resolve many areas of confusion and provide significant favorable guidance to employers in the design and implementation of “hybrid” plans. The Act also provides a new hybrid plan alternative: the “DB(k)” plan.

In recent weeks, the Benefits Law Group has issued three News Alerts summarizing the impact of the Act on defined contribution plans (particularly the Act’s automatic enrollment and fiduciary provisions), as well as the numerous changes in the funding of defined benefit plans.

This News Alert, the final Alert in this series, addresses the provisions of the Act that resolve previously open issues in hybrid plan design, including age discrimination, “wear-away” and “whipsaw” problems. This Alert also discusses the basics of the Cooper decision in conjunction with the changes in the Act, and outlines the structure of the new DB(k) alternative.

What is a “Hybrid” Plan?

Cash balance and pension equity plans exhibit features of both defined benefit and defined contribution plans, therefore they are often referred to as “hybrid” plans. Because these plans look similar to a defined contribution profit sharing or money purchase plan where the normal form of distribution is a lump sum, the value of these plans is generally easier to communicate to employees than a traditional defined benefit plan where the normal form of distribution is an annuity.

A cash balance plan is a defined benefit plan with the look and feel of a defined contribution arrangement. Since it is a defined benefit plan, a cash balance plan does not allocate contributions to individual accounts. Rather, like any other defined benefit plan, the employer must provide the benefits promised under a cash balance plan regardless of the performance of the plan’s underlying assets. However, participants typically have a “notional account” that describes the benefit to be paid at retirement similar to an account balance plan. A common cash balance formula calls for a contribution called a “pay credit,” which is then credited with interest at some specified rate. Under a cash balance formula, a participant accrues relatively greater benefits earlier in his or her career, and because benefits are more often paid in lump sums, benefits are considerably more portable.

Another popular hybrid plan is referred to as a “pension equity plan.” Under a pension equity plan, a participant’s lump-sum benefit equals a percentage of his or her final average pay multiplied by the number of years of credited service.

The Hybrid Plan Age Discrimination Problem—and Solution

For the last decade, hybrid plans were challenged as being intrinsically discriminatory under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, since the interest-crediting feature of these plans resulted in a higher value of an annual accrual for a younger employee than for an older employee (because the younger employee has more years until retirement). The Act makes it clear that hybrid plans are not age-discriminatory so long as the annual credit itself does not discriminate on the basis of age. In other words, if the method of crediting interest is not discriminatory, the ultimate result will not be challenged.

Although the Act pointedly refused to consider the discrimination aspects of hybrid plans implemented prior to June 29, 2005, in Cooper v. IBM Personal Pension Plan, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed that the basic cash balance plan structure established prior to this date is legal. The circuit court specifically found that IBM’s cash balance plan treated all employees equitably, as the plan did not stop making allocations or accruals to the plan, nor did it change the rate at which benefits accrued on account of age. In the view of the appellate court, the district court erred by treating the “time value of money” as age discrimination. The appellate court held that the term “benefit accrual” should be understood to mean what the employer imputes to the account, noting that the effect of interest is not treated as age discrimination for a defined contribution plan and should not be treated as age discrimination for a defined benefit plan.

Although the Seventh Circuit recognized that the older workers had a legitimate complaint since they were worse off under a cash balance plan as compared to a traditional years-of-service-times-final-salary plan, the court concluded that “removing a feature that gave extra benefits to the old differs from discriminating against them.”

Thus, both the Act and the Cooper case provide comfort to an employer that a hybrid plan is not and will not in the future be considered discriminatory based solely on its inherent design.

Defined Benefit Plan Conversions and the Elimination of Benefit “Wear-Away”

As noted above, the Act specifically declines to address conversions from a traditional defined benefit formula to a hybrid plan formula that occurred prior to June 29, 2005. For conversions occurring after June 29, 2005, however, the Act prohibits the “wear-away” of pre-conversion accrued benefits.

In the past, there were two approaches to benefit calculations upon the conversion of a traditional plan to a hybrid plan. One possible formula was cumulative, adding the old benefit based on the pre-conversion formula (taking into account service up to the date of the conversion) to the benefit under the new cash balance plan (taking into account only post-conversion service). Another way to accomplish the conversion was to use an offset formula; that is, using the frozen benefit under the old plan (taking into account service up to the date of conversion) and comparing it to the new benefit formula (based on service both before and after the date of conversion). Under the latter formula, where a participant had a significant pre-conversion accrued benefit, he or she might not have accrued anything under the new formula for a significant period of time, i.e., until the excess benefit under the old formula “wears away.”

Under the Act, a participant’s benefit following the conversion must equal the value of the benefit prior to the conversion plus the benefit earned after the conversion, in essence prohibiting the use of the offset formula for future conversions.

Resolution of “Whipsaw” Concerns

The term “whipsaw” relates to the manner in which lump-sum account balances are paid under defined benefit plans, including hybrid plans. While the lump sum under a defined contribution plan is the then-current value of the account, the lump sum under a cash balance plan is determined by projecting the benefit forward to retirement based on the plan’s interest crediting rate, and then discounting back to the distribution date using an interest rate prescribed by law. If the plan crediting rate is higher than the discount rate, then the lump-sum benefit would be higher than the balance in the participant’s notional cash balance account, creating a “whipsaw” effect for the employer.

The Act provides that, for distributions made after the effective date of the Act, a participant’s lump sum distribution can equal the hypothetical or notional cash balance account, thereby resolving the whipsaw issue. This reverses prior case law in which several courts had concluded, based on IRS regulations, that a distribution could not be less than the present value of the participant’s projected annuity at the plan’s normal retirement age.

Interest Rate and Vesting for Hybrid Plans

Interest Rate. The Act provides that the interest rate used by the plan for present value and benefit calculations may not exceed a market rate, which can equal the greater of a fixed or a variable rate and may also provide a minimum guaranteed rate of return. This provision eliminates a potential problem in hybrid plan design that occurred where the plan credited interest to a participant’s account at a rate not sufficiently tied to market factors.

Three Year Vesting Required. The Act mandates that all benefits accrued under a hybrid plan
must be vested within three years. This provision is generally effective January 1, 2008.

DB(k) Plans

The Act outlines the possibility of adopting a different hybrid plan for employers with fewer than 500 employees beginning in 2010. The “DB(k)” plan would be a true “hybrid” – although the defined benefit component would be subject to the defined benefit rules, the 401(k) component would be subject to the defined contribution rules and only one annual report and one trust would be required. The defined benefit component of the plan must be either a 1% of final average pay formula for up to 20 years of service or a cash balance formula that increases with the participant’s age (and subject to the rules discussed above). This portion of the plan would require three year vesting. The 401(k) portion of the plan would have to include automatic enrollment at a 4% rate and provide for a fully vested match of 50% on the first 4% deferred. A DB(k) would be exempt from the current top heavy rules and would be deemed to satisfy the ADP/ACP nondiscrimination rules.

08-15-2006

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Holland & Hart, L.L.P.

Jane Michaels Recognized As Top Trial Lawyer
Holland & Hart LLP is pleased to announce that Jane Michaels has been selected as one of the best commercial and intellectual property trial lawyers in the United States by The Best of the U.S. LLC.

Ms. Michaels has been a trial lawyer for more than 25 years. She specializes in commercial and intellectual property litigation, with an emphasis on telecommunications and computer industry cases. She has won numerous complex jury and bench trials in business disputes, including trademark, trade secrets, patent, copyright, contract, business tort and technology cases. She is currently ranked no. 1 in Colorado by Chambers USA for for her experience in intellectual property and commercial litigation.

08-15-2006

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Hodgson Russ LLP

Employee Benefits Developments August 2006
Calculating prohibited transaction excise tax on late deferrals
When an employer withholds 401(k) contributions from an employee’s paycheck and fails to make a timely deposit of those contributions into the 401(k) plan’s trust, the result is a prohibited transaction. A prohibited transaction arises because a 401(k) contribution is treated as an asset of the 401(k) plan as of the earliest date on which it can “reasonably be segregated” from the employer’s general assets, and there effectively is an impermissible loan of the plan assets by the 401(k) plan to the employer if the employer has not made the 401(k) deposit by that date. Internal Revenue Code (IRC) § 4975 imposes a 15 percent excise tax on the amount involved in a prohibited transaction. In a new ruling, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) confirmed that the “amount involved” for purposes of calculating the 15 percent excise tax is based on interest on those elective deferrals. Thus, if an employer failed to segregate $100,000 in participant 401(k) contributions from its assets and transmit the contributions to the 401(k) plan on December 8, 2004, and does not do so until March 31, 2005, there is a prohibited transaction for 2004 and a prohibited transaction for 2005. The amount involved for the 2004 prohibited transaction is interest on $100,000 from December 8, 2004 to December 31, 2004. The amount involved for the 2005 prohibited transaction is interest on the new balance owed to the plan after increasing the principal as a result of there not being a correction of the 2004 prohibited transaction and is calculated from January 1, 2005, to March 31, 2005. (Revenue Ruling 2006-38)

Government publishes 2006 Form 5500
On July 13, the Employee Benefits Security Administration, the IRS, and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation released advance copies of the 2006 Form 5500 (the form) and instructions. Notable changes to the form include:

The instructions for lines six and seven have been expanded to describe when an individual no longer is a welfare plan participant. Lines six and seven of the form ask for census information regarding the number of participants and beneficiaries in a plan. According to the new instructions, an individual is not a participant covered under an employee welfare benefit plan on the earliest date on which the individual (1) is ineligible to receive any benefit under the plan, even if the contingency for which the benefit is provided should occur, and (2) is not designated by the plan as a participant.

The IRS no longer requires the filing of Schedule P (annual return of fiduciary of employee benefit trust).

Electronic filing of Form 5500 to be required
The Department of Labor issued final regulations that would require that all Form 5500 filings be made through an electronic filing system. In the final regulation, the effective date was delayed to plan years beginning after 2007. For calendar year filers, these requirements would be in effect for a Form 5500 due in July 2009. In order to accomplish electronic filing, several changes to Form 5500 will be made. It is expected that electronic filings will be made through computer software using internet access. The details of the technological requirements have not been announced. Under the proposed rule, there are no exceptions for small plans to continue to file Form 5500 in paper format. (71 Fed. Reg. 41,359 (July 21, 2006))

Final regulations issued on supplemental wage withholding
The IRS recently finalized regulations governing withholding on supplemental wage payments. Wages affected by the rules include bonuses, restricted stock, severance, nonqualified stock options, deferred compensation, and any other wages paid by an employer that are not “regular” wages. The final rules reflect changes made by the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 (the act), whereby the supplemental wage withholding rate was increased for supplemental wages in excess of $1 million. Under the act, if an employee’s supplemental wages exceed $1 million for the year, the mandatory wage withholding rate increases from the third-lowest rate for single filers (currently 25 percent) to the maximum tax rate in effect at the time (currently 35 percent). The final regulations adopt, with some modifications, the definitions and procedures outlined in the proposed regulations issued in January 2005 and address certain concerns expressed by employers with respect to the classification of wage payments. Although the new rate for large payments served as the impetus for the issuance of regulations, the new rules provide useful guidance for employers making supplemental wage payments in any amount. The final regulations provide comprehensive guidance for classifying various types of payments as regular or supplemental wages, provide employers with a number of options for tracking the total amount of supplemental wage payments made during the year, and provide detailed procedures for withholding on supplemental wages both below and above the $1 million threshold. The regulations are effective for all wages paid after 2006. (T.D. 9276)

IRS issues final guidance regarding employer HSA contributions
Final IRS regulations issued provide important guidance addressing the comparability requirement applicable to employer Health Savings Account (HSA) contributions outside of a cafeteria plan. The regulations also provide guidance for employers who wish to avoid the compara-bility rules by making contributions through a cafeteria plan. The regulations apply to employer contributions to HSAs made after 2006.

Employers are not required to contribute to HSAs maintained by their employees. However, employers that do so must make comparable contributions to comparable participating employees. Comparable participating employees are employees who are in the same category of employees (e.g., part-time and full-time) and who have the same category of high deductible health plan (HDHP) coverage. If an employer’s HSA contributions for a calendar year fail to satisfy the comparability rules, the employer is liable for an excise tax equal to 35 percent of all employer contributions to HSAs for the year.

The comparability requirement does not apply if the employer’s contributions are made through a cafeteria plan. Instead, contributions through a cafeteria plan must satisfy the nondiscrimination rules applicable to cafeteria plans. Accordingly, employers who make HSA contributions through a cafeteria plan can avoid the comparability requirement and the risk of liability for excise taxes. As a general rule, the cafeteria plan nondiscrimination rules permit greater flexibility in designing the types and amounts of employer HSA contributions.

With respect to the comparability requirement applicable to employer HSA contributions outside of a cafeteria plan, the final regulations modify guidance issued in earlier proposed IRS regulations in two important respects:

In determining which employees have the same category of HDHP coverage, participating employees with family HDHP coverage can be subdivided into three categories: Self plus one, self plus two, and self plus three or more. Under the proposed regulations, all participating employees with family HDHP coverage were considered to be comparable participating employees without regard to the level of family HDHP coverage.

If an employer makes HSA contributions for non-union employees, the employer need not make comparable contributions for similarly situated union employees if the union employees are covered by a bona fide collective- bargaining agreement and health benefits were the subject of good-faith bargaining between the employer and union.

As mentioned, the final regulations provide important additional guidance on how employer contributions are made through a cafeteria plan. Specifically, the final regulations provide that employer HSA contributions are made through a cafeteria plan if the cafeteria plan document affords employees the right to elect to receive cash or other taxable benefits in lieu of all or a portion of an HSA contribution (e.g., the plan authorizes pre-tax salary reduction contributions to HSAs maintained by participating employees). The regulations include several examples that illustrate the application of the cafeteria- plan exception. (71 Fed. Reg. 43057 (July 31, 2006))
CASES

ERISA preempts Maryland’s “Wal-Mart” healthcare law
In January 2006, Maryland enacted the Fair Share Healthcare Fund Act (Fair Share Act), requiring non-governmental employers of 10,000 or more individuals to spend up to eight percent of total wages on health insurance costs or to pay to the state an amount equal to the difference. When enacted, it was anticipated that only Wal-Mart would be subject to the Fair Share Act. However, three other employers met the statutory definitions to be covered by the Fair Share Act. The Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA) filed suit to overturn the Fair Share Act. The RILA’s motion for summary judgment was granted by the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, holding that the Fair Share Act violated the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA)’s preemption rule. The federal district court found § 514(a) of ERISA preempts “any and all state laws insofar as they may now or hereafter relate to an employee benefit plan …” The court determined the Fair Share Act “creates healthcare spending requirements that are not applicable in most other jurisdictions … and conflict(s) with similar pending legislation in many other states …” The court rejected the argument of the State of Maryland that the act did not mandate health care coverage because employers could comply by providing non-ERISA covered benefits or paying penalties to the State of Maryland. The court found that those alternatives were not rational choices that employers would choose. This decision will be important as many other states and localities are contemplating legislation similar to that of the State of Maryland’s Fair Share Act. (Retail Indus. Leaders Ass'n v. Fielder, D. Md., 2006)

Only say it if you mean it
On June 30, the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota ruled the terms of a “faulty” summary plan description (SPD) can be enforced even though they conflict with the formal plan document. In 1998, Fairview Health Services (Fairview) sent a packet of information to plan participants that contained a memo and an attached summary of benefits. The memo incorrectly stated that if a participant became disabled, disability benefits would be available until the participant reached age 67. Nothing in the summary contradicted this incorrect statement. However, the plan document stated that disability benefits would only be provided until age 65.

In 1999, plan participant Daniel Greeley started receiving long-term disability benefits. At this time, he noticed the discrepancy between the 1998 memo and the terms of the plan. Greeley sent a letter to Fairview requesting assurances that his benefits would continue until he reached age 67. Fairview failed to respond to Greeley’s letter. When Fairview terminated Greeley’s benefits upon reaching age 65, he sued.

As a threshold issue, the federal district court determined the 1998 memo and attached summary, although incomplete, contained enough information to constitute an SPD. Information included in the memo and summary included the name and type of the plan, the plan year, description of the eligibility requirements for coverage, and how the plan is funded. Furthermore, the 1998 memo and summary was the only information sent to participants regarding their benefits.

In granting summary judgment in favor of Greeley, the court stated he was prejudiced by the memo’s description of benefits “because the individual employee is powerless to affect the drafting and less equipped to absorb the financial hardship of the employer’s errors.” This case teaches the lesson once again that employers must be careful when drafting summary plan descriptions because a benefit mistakenly promised in a participant communication can sometimes be enforceable. (Greeley v. Fairview Health Services, D. Minn., 2006)

Lack of SPD costs employer
Affirming the importance of providing insurance plan participants with SPDs, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia ruled the husband of a deceased life insurance plan participant must receive plan benefits from the employer in spite of his spouse’s failure to complete the forms necessary to preserve her coverage under the insurance policy.

Upon her disability retirement, Martha Haynes contacted the human resources office of her employer, K-VA-T Food Stores, Inc., to determine the appropriate course of action to maintain her group life insurance coverage. Allegedly acting upon information provided by human resources employees, Haynes mailed a waiver of premium form to the insurer, Unum Life Insurance Company of America (UNUM). Under the policy, UNUM maintained the waiver of premium form did not apply to Haynes, and that her insurance coverage could only have been continued if she had elected to convert the coverage to an individual policy. Following her death, the plan denied her husband’s claim for benefits, citing Haynes’s failure to complete the appropriate conversion form within 31 days of her retirement. Her husband argued that K-VA-T breached its fiduciary duties as plan administrator when it did not provide his wife with an SPD as required by ERISA. Using its authority under ERISA § 502(c) to “order such other relief as it deems proper,” the court ordered the employer to pay the death benefit that was not payable under the terms of the insurance policy. Once again, we are reminded of the importance of welfare plan SPDs. (Haynes v. K-VA-T Food Stores, Inc., W.D. Va., 2006)

Website visit not sufficient to change beneficiary
A participant’s visit to a plan Web site, ostensibly with the intention of naming his children as beneficiaries of his 401(k) account, was not enough to change the participant’s prior written beneficiary designation. In 1998, Roy Robinson designated his sister as the sole beneficiary of his 401(k) plan account by filing a written beneficiary designation with the plan. Some time after 1998, Robinson’s employer created and maintained a plan Web site for participants. Robinson allegedly visited the plan’s Web site in 2003 to designate his children as his named beneficiaries. According to his children, no beneficiary was listed on the Web site. In addition, the Web site contained a statement that “beneficiary elections previously made on paper will no longer be valid” and that elections made on the Web site “will take precedence over all other previous beneficiary elections.” Another page of the Web site provided that if a participant has not named a beneficiary and is not married, the account will be paid to the participant’s children. Robinson made no designation on the Web site and filed no written revocation of his prior beneficiary designation.

Following Robinson’s death, the plan paid the 401(k) funds to Robinson’s sister in accordance with his written designation. The children brought suit, arguing that Robinson believed the language on the Web site meant that his written designation of his sister as beneficiary was no longer valid and that his children would therefore be his beneficiaries without his intervention. The U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina disagreed, finding the plan administrator did not abuse its discretion when it denied the children’s claim, because the plan terms required a participant to revoke a prior designation by filing a written designation with the plan. The federal district court found Robinson’s visit to the Web site was not sufficient to discern an intent on his part to change his beneficiary and that he was not in substantial compliance with the plan’s revocation requirement simply because he visited the Web site. This case illustrates the principle that participants should be reminded periodically to update their beneficiary designations by making affirmative designations in accordance with the plan terms. (Robinson v. MeadWestvaco Corp. Savings and Employee Stock Ownership Plan for Salaried and Non-Bargaining Hourly Employees, Dist. S.C., 2006)

08-15-2006

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Hall & Evans, L.L.C.

Brooke Wunnicke Keynote Speaker at University of Wyoming
Brooke Wunnicke was the keynote speaker in Laramie, Wyoming at the University of Wyoming School's annual Judiciary Luncheon for Wyoming judges and the freshman law class.

08-15-2006

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Kirkland & Ellis

Kirkland & Ellis LLP Helps Client Nationwide Win Groundbreaking Hurricane Katrina Insurance Coverage Case
A federal judge ruled in favor of Kirkland & Ellis LLP client Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company in the first Hurricane Katrina insurance coverage case to go to trial. Following an eight-day bench trial that was closely watched by the insurance industry and Gulf Coast communities, Senior Judge L.T. Senter, Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi upheld the validity and enforceability of the water damage exclusion in Nationwide's homeowner's insurance policy, agreeing with Nationwide that it was not obligated to pay for any storm surge damage to the property of Pascagoula residents Paul and Julie Leonard.

Represented by noted tobacco lawyer Richard ""Dickie"" Scruggs, the Leonards sought over $160,000 in monetary damages and, in a request that could have had far-reaching implications for Nationwide and the insurance industry, also urged the wholesale modification of their homeowner's policy to invalidate Nationwide's standard exclusion for water damage. Judge Senter rejected all but $1,228 of the Leonards' damage claims and denied their request that Nationwide's policy should be ""reformed"" so as to provide coverage for all hurricane-related damage. The court also rejected the Leonards' claims that Nationwide's agent had made misrepresentations regarding the scope of the Leonards' insurance coverage.

In his opinion issued on August 15, 2006, Judge Senter ruled that Nationwide ""has met the burden of proving, by a preponderance of the evidence, that [almost all of the] damage to the Leonards’ property was caused by water and waterborne materials"" excluded from coverage by their policy. In addition, the Judge noted, the Leonards ""knew [separate] flood insurance was available and optional"" but did not purchase it.

Nationwide said in a statement: ""We are very pleased that the court ruled in our favor and upheld the long-standing flood exclusion language which is foundational to traditional homeowner policies across the country. This ruling underscores just how important it is for all policyholders to carefully read and understand the terms of the coverage they purchase.

08-15-2006

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