The Supreme Court Rules: Equitable Defenses May Not be Used by
Participants to Rewrite and Defeat Plan Reimbursement
Provisions
By Michael A. Vanic and Joseph C. Faucher
In our November 2012 ERISA Litigation Newsletter, we discussed a
split among the several federal Courts of Appeals with respect to
the ability of employee benefit plans to recover reimbursement for
medical expenses paid for participants who are injured by third
parties. More specifically, some courts (the Ninth Circuit and
Third Circuit) had held that when plans sought reimbursement from
participants who recover – through a settlement or a
judgment – against a person who injured them,
participants could apply "equitable defenses" to defeat
clear plan provisions providing for reimbursement. However, the
Fifth, Seventh, Eighth, Eleventh and DC Circuits had all held that
equitable defenses could not trump the plan document. As we
predicted in our November article, on April 16, 2013, the Supreme
Court
