Profile
Work Department
Position
Russell L. Hirschhorn is co-head of Proskauer’s premier ERISA Litigation Group, which is a significant component of the firm’s ERISA Practice Center and globally renowned Labor and Employment Law Department. Russell’s practice focuses on employee benefits issues arising under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), including class action and complex litigation, U.S. Department of Labor and Internal Revenue Service investigations, and counseling clients on best practices to avoid litigation.
Russell has more than two decades of experience representing plan sponsors, fiduciaries, trustees, and service providers across the country. His work on behalf of clients has included all types of plans, including 401(k) plans, 403(b) plans, defined benefit plans, employee stock ownership plans, executive compensation plans, health and welfare plans, multiemployer plans, multiple employer plans, and severance plans. And, it has included the full gamut of claims arising under ERISA, including excessive investment and plan administration fees and investment underperformance claims; cash balance plan litigation; claims for benefits; company stock fund cases; claims for delinquent contributions; ERISA § 510 claims; ERISA statutory claims; ESOP litigation; executive compensation claims; independent contractor claims; independent fiduciary representations; multiemployer fund litigation; plan service provider claims; recoupment of plan overpayments; retiree benefits claims; severance plan claims; and withdrawal liability claims.
His pro bono work has included serving as lead litigation counsel in several impact litigations: on behalf of social security recipients whose benefits were unlawfully suspended based on an outstanding warrant, deaf and hard of hearing prisoners in Louisiana prisons seeking disability accommodations, and Swartzentruber Amish in upstate New York to obtain religious exemptions from certain building code requirements. Russell also was a principal drafter of several amicus briefs for the Innocence Project, a legal non-profit committed to exonerating wrongly convicted people.
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Testimonials
Collated independently by Legal 500 research team.
‘Partners are willing to be hands on. Work well with outside experts.’
‘They are very responsive to client needs, very level-headed.’
‘Myron Rumeld is a knowledgeable and strong collaborator.’
‘The team has all the requisite skills for handling cases alleging violations of ERISA. Its distinguishing characteristics include the ability to drive cases with more than two parties to a successful resolution, creative methods for calculating damages that can withstand legal challenge, knowing how and when to use experts for consulting and/or testifying, and managing cases in a way that keeps costs under control while comfortably meeting deadlines.’
‘Myron Rumeld is effective in representing either defendants or plaintiffs, without any inherent bias toward either side. When raising contradictions, he is direct without being hostile, insistent but reasonable.’
Key clients
- Wells Fargo & Company
- MetLife
- Intel Corporation
- National Basketball Association
- Trustees of the IAM National Pension Fund – M&K Employee Solutions, LLC
- Bessemer Trust Company
- Baystate Health Inc
- California Institute of Technology
- Trustees of the IAM National Pension Fund
- Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) Health Plan
- Trustees of the IBT Local 854 Pension and Health & Welfare Funds