Shaver
Shaver v. Operating Engineers Local 428 Pension Trust Fund
Opinion
Lead Opinion
Arnold, J.
Opinion by Judge RICHARD S. ARNOLD; Dissent by Judge RAWLINSON.
OPINION
The Operating Engineers Union, Local 428, has an ERISA pension fund for its members’ benefit. The plaintiffs, William Shaver and William Dereschuk, a participant and beneficiary of the plan, respectively, had concerns about the management of the fund. Eventually, they filed a two-count complaint against the trustees and administrator of the ERISA benefit plan, the defendants. The plaintiffs claimed that the defendants failed to turn over, pursuant to statutory requirements, certain financial records of the fund, and violated their fiduciary duty by not turning over those records and by neglecting to keep accurate records of the fund’s opera *1200 tion. The District Court dismissed all the appellants’ claims when it granted the ap-pellees’ 12(b)(6) motion to-dismiss for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted. This appeal is from that decision.
We agree with the District Court that the detailed records of expenditures sought by the appellants were not “instruments” under 29 U.S.C. § 1024 (b)(4), and thus were not subject to the statute’s disclosure requirements. In our view, however, it was…
Dissenting Opinion
Rawlinson, J.
Dissenting:
I respectfully dissent from that portion of the majority’s opinion reversing the district court’s dismissal of Plaintiffs’ breach of fiduciary duty claim. I agree with the *1204 majority that “the trustees are fiduciaries for the purposes of ERISA.” However, I cannot join the majority’s foray into the common law of trusts to thrust an obligation upon the fund that ERISA’s comprehensive statutory scheme does not countenance.
The majority cites generally to 29 U.S.C. § 1027 as the source of the trustee’s duty “to keep adequate records so that the books of the plan can be checked if the need arises.” Majority Opinion at 1202. However, a careful reading of the text of the cited provision does not support the majority’s casual reliance on it.
29 U.S.C. § 1027 provides that:
A plain reading of this statute results in imposing upon the trustees an obligation to maintain adequate records only on those matters of required disclosure.
As the majority opinion acknowledges (Maj. Op. at 1201-1202), 29 U.S.C. § 1024 outlines the reporting requirements for trustees. The majority also concedes, as it must, that the documents sought by Plaintiffs “were not subject to the statute’s…