ERISA (Employee Retirement Income Security Act)

The federal statute governing employer-sponsored retirement and benefit plans, imposing fiduciary duties on plan administrators and trustees. ERISA breach-of-fiduciary-duty claims — particularly those alleging excessive 401(k) fees or imprudent investment selection — are a growing area of litigation finance activity because they involve large plan assets, defined plaintiff classes, and structured settlement frameworks. Fee-related ERISA cases often settle on a percentage-of-plan-assets basis, making damages modeling relatively tractable.

Fee-related ERISA claims are attractive to funders because damages can be modeled as a percentage of plan assets rather than requiring individual injury proof across a large class, which produces a more tractable and less speculative recovery estimate than most other employment theories. Funders diligence the plan's actual fee structure against comparable plans of similar size before committing capital, since the strength of an excessive-fee claim depends heavily on how far outside the norm the challenged fees actually fall.