Radha Pathak secures appellate victory in the Second Circuit.

Stris & Maher LLP is proud to announce another significant victory for retirees and pension plan participants: in Duke v. Luxottica U.S. Holdings Corp. et al., the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed that ERISA plaintiffs may pursue plan-wide relief to remedy systemic statutory violations that reduce their benefits.

The case challenges Luxottica’s use of decades-old actuarial assumptions in calculating joint-and-survivor annuity retirement benefits, thereby allegedly shortchanging married retirees. The Second Circuit held that the plaintiff has standing to seek reformation of the pension plan under ERISA Section 502(a)(2) and further ruled that the effective vindication doctrine precludes forced arbitration of that claim. On the latter point, the Court cited to its earlier decision in Cedeno v. Sasson, 100 F.4th 386, 399 (2d Cir. 2024), a case that Stris & Maher also successfully briefed and argued. The Court also affirmed the district court’s refusal to stay the litigation of plaintiff’s Section 502(a)(2) claims while individual claims proceed in arbitration.

Read the decision here.

Listen to Radha’s oral argument here.

Read the Law360 coverage here.

Read the Bloomberg coverage here.

Read HRD coverage here.