Communications Workers of America Lyle Wingate v. American Telephone and Telegraph Company American Telephone and Telegraph Pension Plan

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• finding that exhaustion of administrative remedies is required in an ERISA suit in order to “prevent [] premature judicial interference” and because those procedures will resolve many such claims
• acknowledging inherent conflict of interest in pension-plan review system; holding that such a conflict cannot alone establish futility
• vacating district court’s decision to excuse plaintiff’s failure to exhaust administrative remedies and remanding to the district court with instructions to dismiss claim without prejudice in order to allow appellees to exhaust Plan remedies.
• “The futility exception is ... quite restricted and has been applied only when resort to administrative remedies is clearly useless.”
• court can excuse exhaustion requirement only “where resort to administrative remedies would be futile because of the certainty of. an adverse decision”
• “[P]laintiffs seeking a determination pursuant to ERISA of rights under their pension plans ‘must . . . exhaust available administrative remedies . . . before they may bring suit . . . .’”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).