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Employee Benefits

We work every day to ensure that working people have access to quality healthcare and retire with dignity.

Levy Ratner provides comprehensive representation and counsel to trustees and administrators of employee benefit funds — both large and small. We have decades of experience advising large multi‑employer pension and welfare benefit funds on compliance, fund administration and collection matters.

Areas We Address

  • Pension Plans

    1. Plan Design, Drafting, Amendment, Qualification and Correction
    2. Investment Obligations and Strategies
    3. Administration & Compliance
    4. Plan Termination & Withdrawal Liability

  • Health & Welfare Funds

    1. Establishment and drafting of plans
    2. Benefits Administration, including participant claims and appeals
    3. Contribution Collections

  • Litigation

    1. Federal Bankruptcy
    2. Collection and  Withdrawal Liability Proceedings In Arbitration and Federal Court
    3. DOL & IRS Audits

  • Employer Accountability

    1. Secure Assets in Bankruptcy
    2. Enforce Employer Withdrawal Liability
    3. Protect Retirees

Employee Benefits Insights

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Who We Work With

We work with multiemployer and single employer fund administrators and trustees responsible for retirement and healthcare plans across industries in both the private and public sectors. Our clients include welfare plans, defined benefit and defined contribution pension plans, 401(k) plans, scholarship and training plans and union‑management industry advancement funds.

What We Offer

Our attorneys have a broad-based knowledge of the laws applicable to employee benefit funds, including technical statutory requirements, plan administration, fiduciary responsibility, and contribution and withdrawal liability collection. Levy Ratner has extensive experience litigating benefit fund issues in arbitration, before administrative agencies, and in bankruptcy and federal district and appellate courts. The firm represents employee benefit funds and their trustees and administrators in DOL, IRS and PBGC proceedings, including submission of new plans for plan tax qualification, fund mergers and “spin offs” to ensure the payment of pension benefits by the PBGC, and to respond to audits by the DOL Employee Benefit Security Administration and IRS.

  • Real World Experience

    Our attorneys have experience as organizers, nonprofit administrators and campaign managers, and are uniquely positioned to understand our clients’ operations from a practical as well as legal perspective.

  • Guidance

    Few law firms can match our creative and responsive approach to helping fund administrators and trustees effectively manage multi-million dollar employee benefit funds and comply with their complex fiduciary obligations.

  • Industry Leadership

    We represent some of the most well-established and largest multi-employer employee benefit funds in the country, providing health and retirement benefits to hundreds of thousands of active and retired individuals and their families.

  • Relationships

    We have earned the trust of major clients who we have represented for decades.

  • Scale

    We’re uniquely equipped to scale our team of attorneys to meet the needs of our clients. We can bring a large team of experienced lawyers to handle an employer’s unexpected bankruptcy with the potential to eliminate benefits for thousands of workers and their families. Or, our attorneys can work one-on-one with a plan administrator to assist with an unanticipated governmental audit.

Case Spotlights

  • Class Action Lawsuit Alleges ERISA & Wage Parity Violations

    On November 28, 2018, Levy Ratner and Feinberg Jackson Worthman & Wasow filed a class action on behalf of Plaintiffs Ynes Gonzalez de Fuente, Mariya Kobryn, and Ivan Kobryn in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York against, among others, Preferred Home Care of New York, Edison Home Health Care, and Healthcap Assurance, Inc., under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (“ERISA”) and the New York State Home Care Worker Wage Parity Law (“Wage Parity Law”).  The plaintiffs seek to represent a proposed class of approximately 4,000 home health aides. The complaint alleges that Preferred and Edison created a single employer welfare benefit plan for the purpose of appearing compliant with the Wage Parity Law, while actually evading its requirements and misappropriating ERISA-protected Plan assets.  Through this scheme, over a two-year period, the complaint alleges Preferred and Edison purported to set aside approximately $35.5 million dollars into the Plan, but in fact paid out less than $10 million towards employee health benefits.  Instead, as alleged, Preferred and Edison concocted a plan to retain millions of dollars of Plan assets for themselves and/or their principals, in violation of the Wage Parity Law and ERISA’s fiduciary and prohibited transaction rules.

    Gonzalez-et-al-v-Preferred-et-al-ComplaintDownload the Putative Class Action Complaint.

    See an article by Bloomberg Law News here.

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Employee Benefits Attorneys