PATRICK MICHAEL DUFFY, District Judge.
This matter is before the Court for review of Metropolitan Life Insurance Company's decision to not disburse benefits to Debbie McCravy under an accidental death and dismemberment plan governed by ERISA.
Plaintiff Debbie McCravy ("Plaintiff" or "McCravy") is a full-time employee of Bank of America, and as an employee is eligible to participate in Bank of America's life insurance and accidental death and
In 2007, McCravy's daughter, Leslie McCravy ("Leslie"), was tragically killed. Leslie was 25 years of age at the time of her death. Up until the time of her death, Leslie was named as a covered dependent on McCravy's insurance plan. McCravy had paid premiums, which had been accepted and retained by MetLife, to insure Leslie's life. Plaintiff asserts that this was a representation to her that Leslie was covered under the Plan, and claims that if Leslie had not been covered, she would have sought out different insurance coverage for her daughter. Plaintiff, who was the beneficiary of the policy in the event of her daughter's death, filed a claim for benefits under the Plan.
However, MetLife denied this claim on the grounds that Leslie was not eligible for coverage under the Plan because she was no longer a child within the definition of the Plan. The Plan provides that insureds may purchase accidental death and dismemberment coverage for "eligible dependent children." The Plan goes on to specifically define eligible dependent children as the children of the insured who are unmarried, dependent upon the insured for financial support, and either (a) under the age of 19 or (b) under the age of 24 if enrolled full-time in a college, high school, or other equivalent educational program. Since Leslie was 25 at the time of her death, she no longer fit the Plan's description of eligible dependent children, and therefore, in Defendant's view, was ineligible for coverage under the Plan. Plaintiff appealed MetLife's denial of her claim, but the denial was affirmed.
Plaintiff initiated the action against Defendant by filing a Complaint in this Court on May 18, 2008. Plaintiff seeks damages on a claim that Defendant's actions constituted breach of fiduciary duty under ERISA, 29 U.S.C. § 1104. In the alternative that if it is determined that Leslie was not eligible for coverage under the Plan, Plaintiff stated that the claim would therefore not be governed by ERISA. However, Plaintiff asserted that she would still be entitled to damages under state law claims for (1) negligence, (2) promissory estoppel, and (3) breach of insurance contract.
On July 14, 2008, the Court issued an ERISA case management Order instructing both parties how to proceed in the case provided they both agreed that all claims were governed by ERISA. However, the parties did not agree that this was the case, and on September 17, 2008, Defendant filed a "Memorandum in Support of Preemption of Plaintiff's State Law Claims," arguing that Plaintiff's three state law claims were preempted by ERISA. On September 22, Plaintiff filed a Reply to this Memorandum. In turn, Defendant filed a Reply to Plaintiffs Reply on October 2, to which Plaintiff filed a Sur-Reply on October 7. Plaintiff then filed two separate Notices of Supplemental Authority, the first on November 13 and the second on November 18. Defendant filed a Reply to these Notices on November 25, to which Plaintiff filed a Reply the same day.
The issue before the Court in this matter is whether or not Plaintiff's three claims brought under state law are preempted by ERISA. However, the procedural posture of this matter is somewhat unusual, in that no formal motion has been
A Rule 12(b)(6) motion should be granted only if, after accepting all wellpleaded allegations in the complaint as true, it appears certain that the plaintiff cannot prove any set of facts in support of his claims that entitles him to relief. See Edwards v. City of Goldsboro, 178 F.3d 231, 244 (4th Cir.1999). The complaint should not be dismissed unless it is certain that the plaintiff is not entitled to relief under any legal theory that might plausibly be suggested by the facts alleged. See Mylan Labs., Inc. v. Matkari, 7 F.3d 1130, 1134 (4th Cir.1993). Further, "[u]nder the liberal rules of federal pleading, a complaint should survive a motion to dismiss if it sets out facts sufficient for the court to infer that all the required elements of the cause of action are present." Wolman v. Tose, 467 F.2d 29, 33 n. 5 (4th Cir.1972).
ERISA pre-empts "any and all State laws insofar as they may now or hereafter relate to any employee benefit plan." White v. Provident Life & Accident Ins. Co., 114 F.3d 26, 29 (4th Cir.1997). "The scope of ERISA's pre-emption is deliberately expansive, and designed to establish pension plan regulation as exclusively a federal concern." Wilmington Shipping Co. v. New England Life Ins. Co., 496 F.3d 326, 342 (4th Cir.2007); see also Aetna v. Davila, 542 U.S. 200, 210, 124 S.Ct. 2488, 159 L.Ed.2d 312 (2004) ("The purpose of ERISA is to provide a uniform federal regulatory regime over employee benefit plans. To this end, ERISA includes expansive preemption provisions which are intended to ensure that employee benefit plan regulation would be `exclusively a federal concern.'") (internal citation omitted). Both the language and legislative history of that Act show that Congress intended ERISA to be the sole remedy for claims arising out of disputes regarding employee benefit plans. The Supreme Court has held that ERISA:
Pilot Life Ins. Co. v. Dedeaux, 481 U.S. 41, 54, 107 S.Ct. 1549, 95 L.Ed.2d 39 (1987) (quoting Massachusetts Mut. Life Ins. Co.
ERISA specifically provides that it preempts any and all state laws which would give a party recourse for a provider's failure to comply with an obligation under an employee benefit plan. "[T]he provisions of [ERISA] shall supersede any and all State laws insofar as they may now or hereafter relate to any employee benefit plan." 29 U.S.C. § 1144. If a Plaintiff was allowed to vindicate his rights under an employee benefit plan through state law causes of action, this would effectively create a way around the provisions of ERISA, and threaten the stability and uniformity of federal employee benefit and pension law.
The Supreme Court of the United States has held that "[a] law `relates to' an employee benefit plan, in the normal sense of the phrase, if it has a connection with or reference to such a plan." Shaw v. Delta Air Lines, Inc., 463 U.S. 85, 96-97, 103 S.Ct. 2890, 77 L.Ed.2d 490 (1983). "Although the phrase `relates to' has an expansive connotation, ERISA's preemptive scope is not unlimited, for `[i]f "relate to" were taken to extend to the furthest stretch of its indeterminacy, then for all practical purposes pre-emption would never run its course, for really, universally, relations stop nowhere.'" Great-West Life & Ann. Ins. Co. v. Inf. Sys. & Networks Corp., 523 F.3d 266, 270 (4th Cir. 2008) (quoting NY. State Conf. of Blue Cross & Blue Shield Plans v. Travelers Ins. Co., 514 U.S. 645, 655, 115 S.Ct. 1671, 131 L.Ed.2d 695 (1995)). Section 1132 of ERISA provides the remedial provisions that are to be applied in situations where a participant or a beneficiary in an employee benefit plan claims that benefits were improperly and unlawfully withheld.
In the present matter, Plaintiff is claiming that she was entitled to certain benefits of her life insurance plan, which was provided to her as an employee of Bank of America. She claims that her late daughter should have been considered a covered dependent under the plan, since she was listed as a dependent and Defendant continued to accept premiums. Therefore, she asserts that Defendant should have disbursed the life insurance premiums to her when her daughter died. However, she acknowledges that her daughter was clearly not a covered dependent under the written terms of the plan.
Section 1132(a)(1) provides that a participant or beneficiary of an ERISA plan may bring an action to recover benefits due under the terms of the plan or to enforce rights under the plan. However, "this circuit has repeatedly rejected efforts to have oral statements override the written terms of ERISA benefit plans." Sargent v. Holland, 114 F.3d 33, 37 (4th Cir. 1997). See also Nichols v. Alcatel USA, Inc., 532 F.3d 364, 374 (5th Cir.2008) ("ERISA-estoppel is not permitted if based on purported oral modification of plan terms."). Furthermore, the Fourth Circuit has explicitly rejected an argument that a participant or beneficiary has a right to an ERISA plan's benefits because the plan provider accepted and retained premiums. White, 114 F.3d at 29; see also Sippel v. Reliance Std. Life Ins. Co., 128 F.3d 1261 (8th Cir.1997) (same); Glass v. United of Omaha Life Ins. Co., 33 F.3d 1341, 1348 (11th Cir.1994) (same). Plaintiff acknowledges that she has no right of recovery under this subsection for payment of plan benefits, which is why she believed it would be futile to bring a claim under § 1132(a)(1). (Pl.'s Reply at 4.)
Instead, Plaintiff's sole ERISA claim is a claim for breach of fiduciary duty. ERISA provides that a civil action may be brought "by a participant, beneficiary, or fiduciary (A) to enjoin any act or practice
However, Plaintiff also seeks to recover damages under several state law causes of action. Specifically, Plaintiff alleges that Defendant's actions constituted negligence, promissory estoppels, and breach of contract. Defendant asserts that all three of these state law causes of action are preempted by ERISA. Defendant bears the burden of showing to this Court that these claims are, in fact, preempted. Great-West, 523 F.3d at 270.
Plaintiff's theory is that, in essence, since Plaintiff was not a beneficiary of the life insurance plan, she has no recourse under ERISA, and therefore is entitled to seek relief under state law causes of action. This theory is erroneous, and Plaintiff's state law claims are preempted by ERISA.
Plaintiff's case relies heavily on an unpublished opinion of the Fourth Circuit, which was issued in 1998. Gardner v. E.I. DuPont de Nemours and Co., Inc., 1998 WL 743669 (4th Cir.1998) (unpublished). That case involved a widow whose husband had worked for DuPont for many years. While employed, he had participated in two separate life insurance programs, the contributory plan, in which the participant chose to put some of his salary towards the life insurance policy, and the non-contributory plan, which automatically covered every DuPont employee. DuPont's policy was that if an employee left the company, he or she could only elect to maintain the contributory policy if he or she had been employed by the company for at least 15 years.
Mrs. Gardner's late husband left the company after only nine years, and was therefore not eligible to continue his participation in the contributory program. However, he informed DuPont he wished to continue his participation in the plan, and DuPont, not catching the error, continued to deduct a monthly amount from his disability check. After Mr. Gardner's death, DuPont refused to pay the coverage amount on the contributory policy, claiming that Mr. Gardner was not eligible for such coverage. Mrs. Gardner sued Du-Pont in federal court, asserting various state law claims, and the district court dismissed the suit, ruling that such claims were preempted by ERISA.
However, the Fourth Circuit reversed the district court, and held that these claims were not preempted by ERISA and should be allowed to go forward. The Court noted that ERISA only allowed a suit by a participant or beneficiary, and since Mrs. Gardner was never a participant in an ERISA plan, and Mr. Gardner was not a participant in such a plan at the time of his death, Mrs. Gardner could not, then, have been a beneficiary of any such plan. The Court concluded by saying that "[b]ecause Mr. Gardner was not a participant, Mrs. Gardner cannot be a beneficiary under ERISA and thus has no standing.... therefore, her state-law claims are not pre-empted." Id. at *4 (emphasis added).
Plaintiff asserts that this case is directly on point, as it involved a party who believed that she was entitled to life insurance benefits arising out of an ERISAcovered employee benefits plan. However, the key point upon which the court's opinion turned was the fact that Mrs. Gardner's link to the actual plan was too attenuated
The case now before the Court is very different in these respects. Here, there is no question that Plaintiff has standing to bring a suit under ERISA. ERISA authorizes participants or beneficiaries to bring a suit against an employee benefit plan provider. 29 U.S.C. § 1132(a)(1)(B). The statute defines those terms as follows:
29 U.S.C. § 1002(7)-(8).
It is undisputed that Plaintiff is an employee of Bank of America who has an employee benefit plan provided by Bank of America. She has life insurance under this plan on her own life, and she believed she had life insurance on the life of her daughter. Plaintiff cannot claim, then, that she is not a "participant" in the plan in question under the statutory definition of that term. Therefore, unlike the plaintiff in Gardner, Plaintiff does have standing to bring an ERISA action against Defendant in this matter, so that case is inapposite to the matter currently before the court. See also Madonia v. Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Virginia, 11 F.3d 444, 446 ("ERISA preempts all state claims that `relate to any employee benefit plan.' In order for Madonia's state law claims to be preempted by ERISA, two criteria must be met: first, an `employee benefit plan' must exist; second, Madonia must have standing to sue as a `participant' or `beneficiary' of that employee benefit plan.")
Plaintiff asserts that her state law claims should not be preempted by ERISA because she is not a beneficiary of the plan, since Defendant decided that she was not due any benefits from the insurance she believed she had taken out on her daughter's life. However, this line of reasoning would completely defeat Congress' goal of making ERISA the exclusive, uniform law governing all pension and employee benefit law in the United States. If this Court were to accept Plaintiff's interpretation of the law, any person whose claim for benefits was denied could make the claim that since they were denied benefits, that meant that they were not a beneficiary, and since they were not a beneficiary, they were free to bring any claims against the plan provider under state law. If this were the case, then the
Plaintiff is construing the term "beneficiary" far too narrowly. A beneficiary, for ERISA purposes, is not merely someone who actually receives employee benefits, or who is entitled to receive benefits. Rather, as the statutory definition provides, it is someone who is designated by the participant who is or may become eligible to receive benefits under the plan at any point. That someone is designated in error when they are in fact ineligible does not necessarily mean that they have no standing to sue under ERISA. If someone was erroneously or capriciously denied benefits to which they were rightfully entitled under an employee benefits plan, Plaintiff surely would not argue that such a person was not a beneficiary who had standing to bring an ERISA claim. It seems, therefore, that Plaintiff's proposed application of the law is that a person who is entitled to benefits under the terms of the plan is a beneficiary, and a person who is not entitled to benefits under the plan is not a beneficiary. This makes no sense, however, for the purposes of determining standing, because it would, essentially, call upon the district court to first determine whether not a plaintiff's claim was meritorious or not simply to determine whether or not the plaintiff had standing to bring the suit in the first place. This would be a case of the proverbial tail wagging the dog, and such a narrow reading of the term "beneficiary" would therefore turn ERISA law on its head, and cannot stand.
The only logical interpretation of the law in this area, then, is that anyone who is a participant in an employee benefit plan has standing to bring an ERISA claim. Plaintiff does not dispute that she is a participant, and fully acknowledges that she set up, through her employer Bank of America, the life insurance plan in question. A beneficiary, then, is anyone designated by the participant with the intent that they possibly receive benefits under the plan. Whether they are actually entitled to receive such benefits is a matter of substantive legal interpretation and ERISA application, not a threshold issue about whether ERISA even governs the issue. Here, Plaintiff was both participant and beneficiary of the plan, and clearly had standing to bring this action.
As stated above, Congress, in the legislative history and language of ERISA itself, made it clear that the Act was to be the exclusive law governing the provision and administration of pension and employee benefit plans. The Supreme Court has expressly held that if a state law claim "relates to" the administration of an ERISA-governed employee benefits plan, that claim is therefore preempted by federal law. See, e.g., Pilot Life Ins. Co., 481 U.S. at 54, 107 S.Ct. 1549. The Court has also held that "[a] law `relates to' an employee benefit plan, in the normal sense of the phrase, if it has a connection with or reference to such a plan." Shaw, 463 U.S. at 96-97, 103 S.Ct. 2890.
Here, there can be no doubt that Plaintiffs claims "relate to" an employee benefit plan. The gravamen of all of Plaintiffs state law claims is that Defendant represented to her that her daughter would be insured, that she believed her daughter's life was insured under the plan, and that she therefore believes she is entitled to benefits under the plan. The administration, terms, and benefits of the benefit plan in question are at the very core of all of these claims, and it would be impossible to resolve any of these claims without impeding on legal territory which Congress has very clearly intended to be the exclusive domain of ERISA. Cf. Davila,
Accordingly, Plaintiffs state law causes of action are all preempted by ERISA, and therefore fail as a matter of law.
This Court next turns to Plaintiffs sole remaining cause of action, a claim for breach of fiduciary duty. Section 1104 of ERISA provides that "a fiduciary shall discharge his duties with respect to a plan solely in the interest of the participants and beneficiaries and ... for the exclusive purpose of providing benefits to participants and their beneficiaries." In her Complaint, Plaintiff seeks to recover for breach of fiduciary duty under § 1132(a)(2) or (a)(3).
However, § 1132(a)(2) is only concerned with a breach of fiduciary duty towards the plan itself, and gives right to a cause of action when benefits authorized under the written terms of the plan are not disbursed, or when benefits are disbursed which are not authorized under the plan. LaRue v. DeWolff, Boberg, & Assoc., 552 U.S. 248, 128 S.Ct. 1020, 1024, 169 L.Ed.2d 847 (2008) ("In holding that (a)(2) does not provide a remedy for this type of injury, we stress that the text of [§ 1109(a)] characterizes the relevant fiduciary relationship as one `with respect to a plan,' and repeatedly identifies the `plan' as the victim of any fiduciary breach and the recipient of any relief."). Here, Plaintiff is claiming that Defendant breached its fiduciary duty towards her, and acknowledges that she was not entitled to receive benefits under the written terms of the plan, so § 1132(a)(2) is therefore inapplicable. To the extent Plaintiff is claiming relief under § 1132(a)(2) for a breach of fiduciary duty, such a claim fails as a matter of law.
This means that any claim by Plaintiff for breach of fiduciary duty must be brought under § 1132(a)(3). Plaintiff claims that Defendant's actions constituted a breach of its fiduciary duty to her in violation of that subsection. In their pleadings, the parties do not seem to be disputing whether or not Plaintiff may bring a claim under that section; rather, the main point of contention regarding Plaintiffs § 1132(a)(3) is the extent of damages Plaintiff may recover.
Congress intended ERISA to incorporate many of the fundamental tenets of the common law of trusts, thus forming a body of ERISA-specific common law that courts and parties could use in dealing with ERISA. Here, Plaintiff seeks to specifically incorporate many of the common law principles of estoppel into ERISA, which would require a provider to provide full benefits to an employee if the provider had made representations of coverage. Plaintiff cites extensively to an opinion of the Solicitor General, who sought to have the Supreme Court of the United States grant certiorari on an appeal of a decision of the Fifth Circuit on this issue.
However, adopting such a rule would seem to conflict with this circuit's rule, explained above, that ERISA does not provide for recovery in cases where the employee has alleged that some oral modification was made to the clear written terms of the plan. Furthermore, the Fourth Circuit has explicitly held that, "[n]or can [a plaintiff] rely on the federal common law under ERISA, which does not incorporate the principles of waiver and estoppel." White v. Provident Life & Acc. Ins. Co., 114 F.3d 26, 29 (4th Cir.1997). Very recently, the Fourth Circuit has further
Gagliano v. Reliance Standard Life Ins., 547 F.3d 230, 239 (4th Cir.2008).
The Supreme Court has held that § 1132(a)(3) only authorizes claims which are not governed by other ERISA provisions. Varity Corp. v. Howe, 516 U.S. 489, 116 S.Ct. 1065, 134 L.Ed.2d 130 (1996). The Fourth Circuit has explicitly ruled that an employee cannot bring a case seeking the payment of benefits under § 1132(a)(3), because the payment of benefits is not an equitable remedy, and is explicitly governed by the rules of § 1132(a)(1)(B):
Korotynska v. Metropolitan Life Ins. Co., 474 F.3d 101, 106-07 (4th Cir.2006) (citations omitted).
Here, Plaintiff did not bring a claim for denial of benefits under § 1132(a)(1). However, an examination of Plaintiff's claim and the relief sought clearly demonstrates that the gravamen of Plaintiffs complaint is that she is entitled to life insurance benefits under the plan, and that Defendant should have to provide her with these benefits. This is, then, at its core, a claim that Defendant wrongfully denied her benefits under an ERISA-covered employee benefits plan. As the Supreme Court explained in Varity and the Fourth Circuit explained in Korotynska, § 1132(a)(1) is the exclusive avenue of recourse for such a claim.
The fact that Plaintiff did not bring a claim under § 1132(a)(1) does not change this fact. See id. at 106 ("The fact that the plaintiff has not brought an § 1132(a)(1)(B) claim does not change the fact that benefits are what she ultimately seeks, and that redress is available to her under § 1132(a)(1)(B)."). Nor does the fact that Plaintiff acknowledges she is not entitled to benefits under the written terms of the plan, and therefore any § 1132(a)(1) claim would fail as a matter of law. Simply put, there is a big difference between a cause of action being unavailable to a plaintiff and a cause of action being available but ultimately unsuccessful. If this Court were to allow Plaintiff to rebrand a claim which is, in essence, a claim for denial of benefits, as a claim for "breach of fiduciary duty," then there would seemingly be nothing to stop any employee who feared he or she would not be successful in an § 1132(a)(1) claim from instead bringing a claim under § 1132(a)(3) and attempting to prevail by appealing to the court's broader equitable powers. To do so would effectively
Other federal courts have faced the issue of whether or not an employee could recover consequential damages under § 1132(a)(3). In many material respects, the present case resembles the Fifth Circuit's recent decision in Amschwand v. Spherion Corp. 505 F.3d 342 (5th Cir. 2007), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 128 S.Ct. 2995, 171 L.Ed.2d 911 (2008). In that case, a widow of a deceased employee sued the plan provider under § 1132(a)(3), seeking the payment of benefits under a life insurance plan, based on an allegation that she had been assured that her deceased husband retained life insurance coverage after a switch in plan providers. However, he was not covered under the written terms of the plan, and when he passed away, the provider denied her claim for benefits. She sued the plan provider under § 1132(a)(3), seeking her late husband's benefits, to which she believed she was rightfully entitled.
The Fifth Circuit held, citing extensively to the Supreme Court's decision in Mertens v. Hewitt Associates, 508 U.S. 248, 113 S.Ct. 2063, 124 L.Ed.2d 161 (1993), that the type of equitable relief federal courts are empowered to grant under § 1132(a)(3) does not encompass consequential damages, but merely restitution damages. Id. at 345. It noted that "[t]he crucial distinction between two historical species of restitution is that equitable restitution seeks only to restore to the plaintiff particular funds or property in the defendant's possession, while legal restitution imposed personal liability for breach of a legal duty." Id. at 346. Under § 1132(a)(3), courts may only grant relief in the form of the former, not the latter. See also id. at 347-48 ("A defendant's possession of the disputed res is central to the notion of a restitutionary remedy, which was conceived not to assuage a plaintiff's loss, but to eliminate a defendant's gain.").
Id. at 348 (citations omitted).
The Fifth Circuit's application of § 1132(a)(3) to a claim which is very similar to Plaintiff's claim in the present matter is very much in line with the law of both the Supreme Court and the Fourth Circuit, as well as nearly all other circuits to have ruled upon the issue.
However, while this Court is compelled to such a holding by the law of ERISA as interpreted by higher courts, it cannot ignore the dangerous practical implications of this application. The law in this area is now ripe for abuse by plan providers, which are almost uniformly more sophisticated than the people to whom they provide coverage. With their damages limited to a refund of wrongfully withheld premiums, there seems to be little, if any, legal disincentive for plan providers not to misrepresent the extent of plan coverage to employees or to wrongfully accept and retain premiums for coverage which is, in actuality, not available to the employee in question under the written terms of the plan.
If the employee never discovers the discrepancy, the plan provider continues to receive windfall profits on the provision in question without bearing the financial risk of having to provide coverage. If the worst happens and the employee does file for the benefits for which he or she had been paying and seeks the coverage he or she believed was provided, the plan provider may then simply deny the employee's benefits claim, and have their legal liability limited to a refund of the premiums. The worst case scenario for fiduciary behavior which is either irresponsible or dishonest, then, in this context, is simply that the plan provider does not profit, but they would never be punished and would not be required to provide the coverage for which the employee was paying and for which, in cases like the present matter and Amschwand, the employee asserts he or she was assured by the provider existed.
Plaintiff's allegations in this case present a compelling case for the availability of some sort of remedy for the breach of fiduciary duty above and beyond the mere refund of wrongfully retained premiums. Plaintiff's assertion, based largely upon the Solicitor General's amicus curie brief to the Supreme Court recommending that certiorari be granted in Amschwand, that much of the caselaw in the area of available remedies for § 1132(a)(3) actions is based upon an erroneous understanding of the equitable remedies traditionally available under trust law is undeniably wellresearched and compelling. This Court agrees wholeheartedly with Judge Benavides' very brief concurring opinion in Amschwand, which stated simply that "[t]he facts as detailed in Chief Judge Jones's opinion scream out for a remedy beyond the simple return of premiums. Regrettably, under existing law it is not available. I am constrained to join the court's opinion, which I find correctly applies controlling precedent." Id. at 348-49. This Court is aware of the irony of its using the word "equity" so often in an Order which sustains a legal application which can potentially be abused, but the law at present prohibits Plaintiff from seeking consequential damages in a § 1132(a)(3) claim, so Plaintiff's damages on this claim are limited to a refund of the withheld premiums.
The Court further notes that unlike many ERISA claims, a cause of action under § 1132(a)(3) is not subject to the Cir.2001). But see Bowerman v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 226 F.3d 574, 592 (2000) (holding that monetary damages may be awarded in a § 1132(a)(3) claim because "when sought as a remedy for breach of fiduciary duty restitution is properly regarded as an equitable remedy because the fiduciary concept is equitable.") (quoting Health Cost Controls of Ill., Inc. v. Washington, 187 F.3d 703, 710 (7th Cir.1999)).
This also logically means that this Court's case management Order will be amended in order to allow the parties the opportunity to conduct discovery. Ordinarily, case management orders in ERISA cases does not provide for discovery, because this Court is ordinarily conducting a review of a provider's decision to deny benefits, and is limited to the same information in the administrative record used by the provider to make that decision. Here, however, the claim for breach of fiduciary duty is very different in nature, and Plaintiff could present information gained in discovery to aid in her case.
Accordingly, Defendant's Motion to Dismiss Plaintiff's claim for relief under 29 U.S.C. § 1132(a)(3) is denied, although the Court does hold that Plaintiff may not recover any consequential damages on that claim.
For the foregoing reasons, the Court finds that Defendant Metropolitan Life Insurance Company's Motion to Dismiss is
