Varity Corp. v. Howe

A group of beneficiaries of a firm’s employee welfare benefit plan, protected by the Employee Retirement Income Se*492curity Act of 1974 (ERISA), 88 Stat. 832, as amended, 29 U. S. C. § 1001 et seq. (1988 ed.), have sued their plan’s administrator, who was also their employer. They claim that the administrator, through trickery, led them to withdraw from the plan and to forfeit their benefits. They seek, among other things, an order that, in essence, would reinstate each of them as a participant in the employer’s ERISA plan. The lower courts entered judgment in the employees’ favor, and we agreed…