Washington, D.C., December 2, 2025 – Today, Glenn Butash, Chair of the Legal Center for The ERISA Industry Committee (ERIC), testified before the House Education and Workforce Committee’s Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions at a hearing titled “Pension Predators: Stopping Class Action Abuse Against Workers’ Retirement.” The hearing explored abusive litigation affecting employee benefit plans. During his testimony, Butash offered potential litigation reforms critical to protecting the integrity of benefit plans sponsored by employers and unions governed by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA).
“[O]ver the past 15 years, the plaintiffs’ bar has exploited ERISA’s civil enforcement provisions as a weapon by opportunistically attacking large plan sponsors and fiduciaries in a systematic way,” said Butash. “ERIC has no quarrel with plan participants pursuing well-founded claims permitted under ERISA. But too often the cases we see are expensive fishing expeditions by lawyers seeking settlements from deep-pocketed corporate plan sponsors. Their timing, approach, and grounds follow a formulaic playbook. Plan sponsors are forced to divert time to fight suits that is better spent hiring workers and improving benefits. We need a balanced solution to end this abuse, and ERIC is prepared to work with Congress to achieve that goal.”
During his testimony, Butash expressed support for responsible reforms designed to strike a “careful balance” to ensure that meritorious ERISA cases may continue to be brought, while weeding out frivolous or unfounded, cookie-cutter allegations.
According to a recently filed Supreme Court brief by Encore Fiduciary, a fiduciary liability insurance underwriter, over one half of plans with more than $1 billion in assets have been targeted by at least one excessive fee or investment performance lawsuit since 2016. Plans with $500 million or more in assets have close to a 10% chance of being sued in a given year. And while some class action settlements are large, many result in incredibly small recoveries for actual plan participants, as most of the money is paid for attorney’s fees, expenses, and payments to the named plaintiffs.
The full testimony provided by ERIC’s Glenn Butash can be viewed here.