Eleventh Circuit en banc drops ERISA exhaustion requirement
Haynes and Boone reports that the en banc Eleventh Circuit, in Bolton v. Inland Fresh Seafood Corp. of America, overruled its long-standing rule forcing plaintiffs to exhaust internal plan procedures before suing on statutory ERISA claims.
According to a Haynes and Boone client alert, the en banc Eleventh Circuit overruled circuit precedent requiring plaintiffs to exhaust a plan's internal claims and appeals procedures before bringing statutory ERISA claims. For employers, plan sponsors, insurers, and third-party administrators with operations in the Eleventh Circuit, the immediate consequence is that a statutory claim can reach court without a completed internal remedy cycle, which changes the timing and cost profile of benefits litigation and may affect the sequencing of administrative and judicial proceedings. For plan documents, the decision may matter to how internal claim and appeal provisions are drafted, administered, and relied upon, and to how defense counsel responds to suits that arrive without an adverse benefits determination.
Sophisticated counsel should watch three things: the scope of the en banc holding, including whether it addresses only the exhaustion of plan remedies or also related jurisdictional and administrative-claim questions; the treatment of parallel exhaustion rules in other circuits; and whether the court addressed retroactivity and its effect on pending cases.
The alert is a single law-firm summary and the caption is unusual, so the slip opinion itself should be read before any filing, plan-amendment, or motion practice is adjusted.