Rejecting actuarial heresy, the United States Supreme Court has refreshingly acknowledged that “People make mistakes. Even administrators of ERISA plans.” Specifically, the Court held that a single honest mistake in plan interpretation does not justify stripping the administrator of deference for subsequent related interpretations.
In Conkright v. Frommert, a case that has been winding through the courts for the past decade, rehired employees of Xerox Corporation alleged that the Xerox pension plan administrator improperly offset their benefit calculations for prior lump sum distributions of pension benefits. Their claims involved a series of plan amendments, communication to participants, and how the plan administrator …