Law360 (August 29, 2025, 4:54 PM EDT) \u2014 Yellow Corp. seeks to revive a $137 million breach dispute against the Teamsters at the Tenth Circuit, married retirees will ask the Eleventh Circuit to restart a pension conversion fight, and the en banc Fifth Circuit reconsiders a challenge to a rule implementing a 2020 surprise health billing law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here are four appellate argument sessions in September that benefits attorneys may want to track.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yellow Corp. will ask the Tenth Circuit to revive its $137 million suit against the Teamsters alleging the union breached a labor contract when it held up a corporate restructuring, which a Kansas federal judge tossed in March 2024 in favor of parties pursuing a grievance process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A three-judge panel has set arguments for Sept. 9 in Yellow\u2019s appeal seeking to revive allegations that the Teamsters National Freight Industry Negotiating Committee and union locals drove the company into bankruptcy when they wouldn\u2019t support a business restructuring proposal until wage increases were implemented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yellow, which first sued the Teamsters in 2023, argues on appeal that breach of contract claims in its suit aren\u2019t subject to the grievance process in the National Master Freight Agreement and that the lower court should have allowed an amended complaint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meanwhile, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, its local affiliates and the Teamsters National Freight Industry Negotiating Committee argue on appeal that a lower court correctly ruled that language in the contract required Yellow pursuing a grievance over breach claims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yellow also argued in a reply brief filed with the appellate court in December that the lower court was wrong to hold that the International Brotherhood of Teamsters organization was subject to the National Master Freight Agreement, which was between Yellow and individual Teamsters locals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe true significance of IBT not being a party to the NMFA is that Yellow and IBT had no agreement to grieve any dispute between them and Yellow\u2019s claims against IBT should not have been dismissed for failure to exhaust grievance procedures,\u201d Yellow\u2019s reply said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The case is Yellow Corp. et al. v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters et al., case number 24-3111, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
An Eleventh Circuit panel on Sept. 17 will consider whether to revive a proposed class action federal benefits lawsuit from married utility company retirees who alleged their pension benefits were lowballed due to outdated mortality tables used in conversions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The proposed class of Southern Company pension plan participants, led by ex-workers William Drummond and Richard Odom, appealed after a U.S. District Judge Steve C. Jones in July 2024 dismissed the suit for failure to state a claim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The case is one of several Employee Retirement Income Security Act proposed class actions that are percolating through the district and appellate courts challenging employers\u2019 assumptions used to convert pension benefits from single-life annuity to joint-and-survivor annuity form.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
ERISA requires companies that dispense retirement benefits in JSA form to provide a pension \u201cwhich is the actuarial equivalent of a single annuity for the life of the participant,\u201d according to the statute. But that isn\u2019t clearly defined in statute and parties dispute what that means in these cases. Retirees typically argue that benefits converted using unreasonable and outdated mortality assumptions aren\u2019t actuarially equivalent under the law, while employers often counter that their methodology is proper because actuarial equivalency is a term defined in the plan that they followed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the Sixth Circuit, an appellate panel in May appeared skeptical of a Michigan federal judge\u2019s holding that unreasonable actuarial assumptions were allowed in his decision tossing pension conversion suits against Kellogg and FedEx in 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a sign of the potential impact of the case, the U.S. Department of Labor filed an amicus brief in the case in December that favored Southern Company retirees\u2019 pension suit revival bid, arguing that current and reasonable assumptions were required under ERISA. That DOL brief was later cited in the Kellogg workers\u2019 appeal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Employer-side attorney Anne Tyler Hall, managing partner at Hall Benefits Law, said \u201cI think there will be a ripple effect\u201d from the Eleventh Circuit\u2019s decision in the appeal that could impact other litigation challenging employers\u2019 definitions of actuarial equivalency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cUpholding the lower court\u2019s decision would help, in this case, maintain predictability in benefit liabilities and flexibility in plan design, which are core tenants of the statute,\u201d Hall said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Andrew Oringer, partner and general counsel at the Wagner Law Group and an employer-side benefits attorney, agreed the Eleventh Circuit appeal was worth watching: \u201cThe courts have been fairly inconsistent regarding actuarial assumptions, particularly given differing factual nuances, so it\u2019s worthwhile how any particular case, including this one, comes out,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The case is William Drummond et al. v. Southern Company Services Inc. et al., case number 24-12773, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Fifth Circuit on Sept. 24 has scheduled an en banc rehearing in a challenge to the 2020 No Surprises Act, which set up an arbitration system between insurers and providers for out-of-network claim disputes in an effort to reduce patients\u2019 surprise medical bills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The full appellate court agreed to rehear the case en banc in May after a three-judge panel largely upheld the law in 2024, concluding agencies complied with the Administrative Procedure Act when finalizing a rule on how to calculate payment amounts in an independent dispute resolution process known as IDR.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The consolidated Administrative Procedure Act suit is led by the Texas Medical Association, which represents more than 50,000 doctors and medical students in the Lone Star state. Patients seek to revive their suit alleging that the government unlawfully promulgated a July 2021 rule in connection with the act, which went into effect in January 2022. The federal government also cross-appealed the district court\u2019s ruling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The rule challenged in the suit specifically dealt with methodology related to what\u2019s called the qualified payment amount or QPA used to determine compensation rates for a given provider subject to the IDR process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Numerous employer-side benefits attorneys said they\u2019re keeping an eye on the proceedings given the implications for health plans subject to the IDR process, including Erin Weber, a partner in Winston & Strawn LLP\u2019s employee benefits and executive compensation practice group, who said the case was \u201cimportant to watch.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIDR has become wildly popular, with providers initiating the vast majority of the arbitrations and winning the vast majority of the decisions. Yet the providers are the ones bringing suit here, arguing that the award calculations should be more favorable to them,\u201d Weber said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Weber said she\u2019s also watching to see how the U.S. Supreme Court\u2019s decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v.Raimondo , which upended the so-called Chevron doctrine handing deference to federal agencies to interpret statutes, impacts the appellate court\u2019s analysis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHow much deference will the court give the government agencies versus taking the lead in interpreting the language of the statute?\u201d Weber said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Alden Bianchi, counsel at McDermott Will & Emery LLP and an employer-side attorney, agreed the case was a critical one for benefits attorneys to watch given the impact on health plans arbitrating out-of-network claim disputes with providers using the IDR process. Bianchi also voiced skepticism that the appellate court would do much to untangle an already complicated situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis has gotten to be such a morass\u2026 if they reverse it, it\u2019s just going to amplify the confusion. But I\u2019m not sure [that] it\u2019ll materially add to the confusion, because it\u2019s already crazy,\u201d Bianchi said, referring to the en banc court\u2019s ultimate decision in the case and its impact on the IDR process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bianchi added that he was hopeful that Congress might take action to address issues with the NSA, pointing to a recent study published in the journal Health Affairs earlier this month that showed the IDR process subject to the law incurred an estimated $5 billion in costs from 2022 to 2024. The article was written by researchers from Georgetown University\u2019s McCourt School of Public Policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis is on Congress\u2019s radar screen,\u201d Bianchi said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The case is Texas Medical Association et al. v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services et al., case number 23-40605, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Institutional investors on Sept. 29 will again urge the Second Circuit to revive a lawsuit accusing Bank of America, UBS and others of violating antitrust law by rigging the interbank borrowing rate for Japanese yen, after a New York federal court ended the case in July 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The California State Teachers\u2019 Retirement System and a pair of investment funds, Hayman Capital Master Fund LP and Japan Macro Opportunities Master Fund LP, seek to restart their suit and lead a class of sophisticated investors alleging harm over derivatives they traded underpinned by the manipulated benchmark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Investors first sued in July 2015, accusing the banks of conspiring to rig the London Interbank Offered Rate for<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Japanese yen between 2006 and 2011. Libor was the benchmark used to determine the rate at which banks borrowed foreign currency from one another. CalPERS, an institutional investor that also traded derivatives subject to the suit\u2019s antitrust claims, joined in an amended complaint in December 2015.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Libor was replaced with the Secured Overnight Financing Rate, or SOFR, after a number of rate-rigging scandals came to light, and some of the world\u2019s largest banks paid billions in penalties to regulators in the United States and Europe to settle accusations that they participated in the market manipulation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Second Circuit already revived the case once in 2020, reversing a toss of the suit for lack of standing that a New York federal court had handed down in 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The case is Sonterra Capital Master Fund Ltd. et al. v. UBS AG et al., case number 24-1954, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
\u2013Editing by Amy Rowe and Nick Petruncio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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