Federal Court On the Money in Pension Case

I am stunned. Defined benefit pension plans and their funding measures and funding rules are a very complicated topic. In fact, federal judges (for private plans, they must be federal as ERISA preempts state law) often struggle to understand the intricacies of defined benefit plans.

I can't blame them. Congress has written statute that is so twisted as to make it extremely difficult for experts at the IRS to provide regulations and for trained actuaries to them implement. These are people who spend much of their working lives worrying about the rules underlying pension plans. For a judge with little or no formal pension training to see through the fog is a really nice change.

So, what's it all about, [Alfie]?

In Palmason v Weyerhauser, as I understand it, plaintiffs brought suit because Weyerhauser invested too large a portion of its qualified pension assets in risky asset classes, primarily alternatives (while the opinion doesn't specify, generally pension assets are considered invested in alternative assets when those assets are classified as none of cash, fixed income, or equity, e.g., real estate or infrastructure). At some point, the plan became underfunded.

It's time for an explanation. And, the Court got this one right. Measures of the funded status of a pension plan can be on many different bases. For accounting purposes, we have two different measures of the obligations (often referred to as plan liabilities) of a plan each based on a discount rate which is determined based on yields of fixed income instruments on the last day of the fiscal year. The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) looks at the plan's liabilities based on the rates at which PBGC thinks those obligations could be settled in the event of plan termination (this tends to produce a particularly high liability). IRS (and ERISA) funding rules are theoretically similar to accounting rules, but due to smoothing techniques and a constant stream of funding relief rules, a plan's funding liability (sometimes referred to As AFTAP) may be far less than these other liabilities.

In the Court's opinion, it points out that plaintiff must have standing to sue when the claim is filed. Attorneys could give you chapter and verse as to why this is the case and what generates standing, but I'll keep it simple. Under ERISA, generally, to sue for monetary damages, one must be able to show monetary harm.

In a US qualified defined benefit pension plan, a participant (except in the case of certain plan terminations) is entitled to a payment from a pool of assets. Those assets are used to pay the benefits of all plan participants. So, unlike a defined contribution plan, a diminution in plan assets may not affect the ability of the plan to pay benefits to a particular participant.

In any event, plaintiff's expert pointed out that the plan was funded 76% or 85.5% at the time the suit was filed. These were apparently accounting and PBGC measures, but not funding measures.

How can a participant be harmed by the funding level in a defined benefit plan if the plan is not being terminated? Essentially, there are two ways:

• If a plan's AFTAP is less than 80%, a participant's ability to receive a lump sum payment may be eliminated in part or in full.
• If a plan's AFTAP is less than 60%, a participant's future accruals will cease [perhaps temporarily].

The plan was not close to either of these conditions. Near the date that the suit was filed, the AFTAP was likely in the vicinity of 100% or more.

While I do not have access to the report or testimony of plaintiff's expert, it would appear that he focused on the measures that he did because they helped his client's case. Perhaps he did this because he realized that participant had no case otherwise. 

Would you as an expert take a case where the only testimony that you could provide would be that which only purpose would be to obfuscate the real point?

Judge Lasnik was not pleased. Rarely, if ever, have I seen a pension case where the judge calls out an expert by name and essentially criticizes his testimony for ignoring the real facts of the case. I hate to criticize my actuarial brethren as oftentimes, judges have not understood really relevant testimony from actuaries and made, shall we say, interesting rulings, but in this case, the judge saw the smoke and mirrors and appropriately, in my opinion, shot down the expert.