Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca9-10-56415/USCOURTS-ca9-10-56415-2/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 791
Nature of Suit: Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA)
Cause of Action: 

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FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

GLENN TIBBLE; WILLIAM BAUER;

WILLIAM IZRAL; HENRY

RUNOWIECKI; FREDERICK

SUHADOLC; HUGH TINMAN, JR., as

representatives of a class of similarly

situated persons, and on behalf of the

Plan,

Plaintiffs-Appellants,

v.

EDISON INTERNATIONAL; THE

EDISON INTERNATIONAL BENEFITS

COMMITTEE, FKA The Southern

California Edison Benefits

Committee; EDISON INTERNATIONAL

TRUST INVESTMENT COMMITTEE;

SECRETARY OF THE EDISON

INTERNATIONAL BENEFITS

COMMITTEE; SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

EDISON’S VICE PRESIDENT OF

HUMAN RESOURCES; MANAGER OF

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA EDISON’S

HR SERVICE CENTER,

Defendants-Appellees.

No. 10-56406

D.C. No.

2:07-cv-05359-

SVW-AGR

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2 TIBBLE V. EDISON INT’L

GLENN TIBBLE; WILLIAM BAUER;

WILLIAM IZRAL; HENRY

RUNOWIECKI; FREDERICK

SUHADOLC; HUGH TINMAN, JR., as

representatives of a class of similarly

situated persons, and on behalf of the

Plan,

Plaintiffs-Appellees,

v.

EDISON INTERNATIONAL; SOUTHERN

CALIFORNIA EDISON BENEFITS

COMMITTEE, incorrectly named The

Edison International Benefits

Committee; EDISON INTERNATIONAL

TRUST INVESTMENT COMMITTEE;

SECRETARY OF THE SOUTHERN

CALIFORNIA EDISON COMPANY

BENEFITS COMMITTEE, incorrectly

named Secretary of the Edison

International Benefits Committee;

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA EDISON’S

VICE PRESIDENT OF HUMAN

RESOURCES; MANAGER OF

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA EDISON’S

HR SERVICE CENTER,

Defendants-Appellants.

No. 10-56415

D.C. No.

2:07-cv-05359-

SVW-AGR

OPINION

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TIBBLE V. EDISON INT’L 3

On Remand From The United States Supreme Court

Argued and Submitted

December 7, 2015—San Francisco, California

Filed April 13, 2016

Before: Alfred T. Goodwin and Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain,

Circuit Judges, and Jack Zouhary, District Judge.*

Opinion by Judge O’Scannlain

SUMMARY**

Employee Retirement Income Security Act

On remand from the United States Supreme Court, the

panel affirmed the district court’s judgment, after a bench

trial, in favor of an employer and its benefits plan

administrator on claims of breach of fiduciary duty in the

selection and retention of certain mutual funds for a benefit

plan governed by ERISA.

The court of appeals had previously affirmed the district

court’s holding that the plan beneficiaries’ claims regarding

the selection of mutual funds in 1999 were time-barred. The

* The Honorable Jack Zouhary, United States District Judge for the

Northern District of Ohio, sitting by designation.

** This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has

been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.

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4 TIBBLE V. EDISON INT’L

Supreme Court vacated the court of appeals’ decision,

observing that federal law imposes on fiduciaries an ongoing

duty to monitor investments even absent a change in

circumstances.

On remand, the panel held that the beneficiaries forfeited

such ongoing-duty-to-monitor argument by failing to raise it

either before the district court or in their initial appeal.

COUNSEL

Michael A. Wolff, Schlichter Bogard & Denton LLP, St.

Louis, Missouri, argued the cause and filed the briefs for the

plaintiffs-appellants. With him on the briefs were Jerome J.

Schlichter, Nelson G. Wolff, and Sean E. Soyars, Schlichter

Bogard & Denton LLP, St. Louis, Missouri.

Johnathan D. Hacker argued the cause and filed the brief for

for the defendants-appellees. With him on the brief were

Meaghan VerGow, O’Melveny & Myers LLP, Washington,

D.C.; Ward A. Penfold and Gabriel Markoff, O’Melveny &

Myers LLP, San Francisco, California; and Sergey

Trakhtenberg, Southern California Edison Company,

Rosemead, California.

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TIBBLE V. EDISON INT’L 5

OPINION

O’SCANNLAIN, Circuit Judge:

Glenn Tibble and other beneficiaries sued their employer

Edison International and its benefit plan administrator under

the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974,

asserting a violation of the duty of prudence in the selection

and retention of certain mutual funds. The district court held

that the beneficiaries’ claims were time-barred, and, on

appeal, we agreed. The Supreme Court subsequently vacated

our decision, observing that federal law imposes on

fiduciaries an ongoing duty to monitor investments even

absent a change in circumstances, and remanded to us. 

Consistent with the Supreme Court’s instructions, we must

decide whether the beneficiaries forfeited such ongoing-dutyto-monitor argument by failing to raise it before the district

court or our Court.

I

Edison International is a holding companywhich includes

Southern California Edison Company and other energy

interests (collectively “Edison”). As an employerorganization, Edison offers a 401(k) Savings Plan (“Plan”) to

its workforce. That Plan is a defined-contribution fund,

meaning that the value of any employee’s retirement benefits

is limited to his or her own individual investment account. 

Participants invest a part of their wages combined with a

company contribution in the investment options they choose

from the Plan menu. Ultimately, the value of those individual

investments is determined by the market performance of

employee and employer contributions, less expenses such as

management or administrative fees. As of 2007, the plan held

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6 TIBBLE V. EDISON INT’L

roughly $3.8 billion in assets for the benefit of approximately

20,000 participants.

The Plan’s investment menu originally contained six

options. In response to a study and negotiations with unions

representing some of the workforce, Edison expanded the

Plan dramatically in 1999. Particularly relevant here, Edison

added three retail-class mutual funds. These funds were

generally available to the public and had higher

administrative fees than other institutional-class alternatives

available only to institutional investors. Edison added three

more retail-class mutual funds to the Plan after 2002.

A

On August 16, 2007, Glenn Tibble and other current and

former beneficiaries sued Edison pursuant to § 502(a) of the

Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974

(“ERISA”), which allows “a participant, beneficiary or

fiduciary” to bring an action for breach of fiduciary duty. 

29 U.S.C. § 1132(a)(2). Among other claims, beneficiaries

asserted that Edison violated its fiduciaryduties under ERISA

by selecting retail-class mutual funds when cheaper,

institutional-class funds were available. Edison moved for

summary judgment, asserting that the beneficiaries’ claims

regarding the three mutual funds added to the Plan in 1999

were barred by Section 413 of ERISA, which states that no

action for fiduciary breach can be commenced six years after

“the last action which constituted a part of the breach or

violation.” 29 U.S.C. § 1113. The district court agreed,

granting partial summary judgment and observing that these

mutual funds were added to the plan more than six years

before beneficiaries’ lawsuit. Tibble v. Edison Int’l, 639 F.

Supp. 2d 1074 (C.D. Cal. 2009). In so holding, the district

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TIBBLE V. EDISON INT’L 7

court reasoned that “[t]here is no ‘continuing violation’

theory to claims subject to ERISA’s statute of limitations.” 

Id. at 1086 (quoting Phillips v. Alaska Hotel & Rest. Emps.

Pension Fund, 944 F.2d 509, 520 (9th Cir. 1991)).

Following partial summary judgment, beneficiaries

proceeded to trial on whether Edison violated its fiduciary

duty by selecting the retail-class mutual funds added to the

Plan in 2002. During trial, however, the district court also

allowed beneficiaries to allege a violation of the duty of

prudence relating to the 1999-added mutual funds on the

theory that “significant events within the limitations period”

should have triggered a review of these funds. To support

this theory, beneficiaries offered testimony from their expert,

Dr. Steven Pomerantz. Pomerantz pointed out that two of the

funds added in 1999 had undergone a name change and

another had changed from a small-cap growth fund to a

small-mid-cap growth fund. Pomerantz asserted that these

changes were “significant enough” that Edison should have

conducted a full due diligence review.

During trial, beneficiaries also asserted that Edison

violated its duty of prudence by keeping a certain Money

Market Fund in the Plan that allegedly charged excessive

management fees. Although Edison initially added the

Money Market Fund more than six years before litigation

commenced, the beneficiaries claimed that Edison violated its

fiduciary duty within the relevant time period by failing to

monitor the Fund’s fees and switch to one with lower fees. 

The district court allowed beneficiaries to proceed on this

claim, notwithstanding its ruling related to the 1999-added

mutual funds.

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8 TIBBLE V. EDISON INT’L

Ultimately, the district court ruled in favor of Edison on

almost all of beneficiaries’ claims. With respect to the retailclass mutual funds added in 1999, the district court concluded

that the changes identified by beneficiaries within the

limitations period were insufficient to justify a full due

diligence review. The district court also ruled in favor of

Edison with respect to the Money Market Fund, concluding

that Edison did in fact monitor this Fund within the relevant

time period and that its decision to maintain the Money

Market Fund was not imprudent.

B

Following judgment in the district court, beneficiaries

appealed to this Court of Appeals. They argued that the

district court erred in concluding that ERISA’s six-year

limitation barred their claim that Edison breached its

fiduciary duty by adding retail-class mutual funds to the Plan

in 1999. They did not contest the district court’s conclusion

that no “significant events” occurred within the relevant

period that would have triggered a due diligence review. 

Rather, they contended that under Section 413 of ERISA, the

six-year limitation incorporates the continuing violation

doctrine. In response, Edison acknowledged that it had an

ongoing duty to ensure that each of the Plan’s investment

options remained prudent. But Edison pointed out that the

beneficiaries were not alleging acts that constituted a

violation within the six-year period, but instead arguing their

lawsuit should be deemed timely because of the “continuing

effects” of decisions made previously, in 1999.

We sided with Edison, holding that “the act of designating

an investment for inclusion starts the six-year period . . . for

claims asserting imprudence in the design of the plan menu.” 

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TIBBLE V. EDISON INT’L 9

Tibble v. Edison Int’l, 729 F.3d 1110, 1119 (9th Cir. 2013). 

We declined beneficiaries’ invitation to “equitably engraft

onto, or discern from the text of section 413 a ‘continuing

violation theory.’” Id. We reasoned that “[c]haracterizing

the mere continued offering of a plan option, without more,

as a subsequent breach” would render ERISA’s time

limitation meaningless and could make fiduciaries liable for

decades-old decisions. Id. at 1120. We also concluded that

the district court was correct in allowing beneficiaries to

assert evidence of “changed circumstances engendering a

new breach,” but noted that it found that no such

circumstances were present. Id.

C

Following our decision, beneficiaries successfully

petitioned for certiorari to the Supreme Court. There, they

asserted that their case was “unlike those in which the

plaintiff bases a claim on an unlawful act that occurred prior

to the [limitations] period but that has continuing effects

during that period.” Instead, they argued that the alleged

breach underlying their claims was Edison’s “failures

prudently to review and remove retail-class shares within the

limitations period” (incidentally, an argument which was not

raised before us). Edison responded by arguing that

beneficiaries had asserted no such claim before the trial court

even though they were perfectly free to do so. Accordingly,

Edison argued the petition should be dismissed as

improvidently granted.

The Supreme Court disagreed with our simple conclusion

that ERISA’s six-year time limitation applied and vacated our

decision. See Tibble v. Edison Int’l, 135 S.Ct. 1823 (2015). 

According to the Court, we erred by “applying a statutory bar

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10 TIBBLE V. EDISON INT’L

to a claim of a ‘breach or violation’ of a fiduciary duty

without considering the nature of the fiduciary duty.” Id. at

1827. The Court emphasized that “under trust law, a

fiduciary normally has a continuing duty of some kind to

monitor investments and remove imprudent ones.” Id. at

1828–29. Correspondingly, the Court reasoned that a claim

for breaching such duty is timely under ERISA “so long as

the alleged breach of the continuing duty [to monitor]

occurred within six years of suit.” Id. at 1829. The Court

acknowledged that beneficiaries may have forfeited their

claim that Edison “committed new breaches of the duty of

prudence by failing to monitor their investments.” Id. at

1829. The Court instructed us to consider this issue on

remand. Id.

II

Section 413 of ERISA provides that no action for

fiduciary breach may be commenced “after the earlier of”:

(1) six years after (A) the date of the last

action which constituted a part of the breach

or violation, or (B) in the case of an omission

the latest date on which the fiduciary could

have cured the breach or violation, or

(2) three years after the earliest date on which

the plaintiff had actual knowledge of the

breach or violation;

except that in the case of fraud or

concealment, such action may be commenced

not later than six years after the date of

discovery of such breach or violation.

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TIBBLE V. EDISON INT’L 11

29 U.S.C. § 1113. There is no dispute that the addition of

retail-class mutual funds to the Plan in 1999 occurred more

than six years before beneficiaries brought suit. The question

is whether beneficiaries waived any argument that Edison

breached its ongoing duty to monitor these funds within the

statutory period.

A

We recognize “a ‘general rule’ against entertaining

arguments on appeal that were not presented or developed

before the district court.” Visendi v. Bank of Am., 733 F.3d

863, 869 (9th Cir. 2013) (quoting In re Mercury Interactive

Corp. Sec. Litig., 618 F.3d 988, 992 (9th Cir. 2010)). 

“Although ‘no bright line rule exists to determine whether a

matter has been properly raised below,’ an issue will

generally be deemed waived on appeal if the argument was

not ‘raised sufficiently for the trial court to rule on it.’” In re

Mercury, 618 F.3d at 992 (quoting Whittaker Corp. v.

Execuair Corp., 953 F.3d 510, 515 (9th Cir. 1992)).

1

Beneficiaries admit that during trial they did not argue

that Edison violated its duty of prudence by failing to monitor

retail-class mutual funds added to the Plan in 1999. Instead,

they pursued a theory that “significant changes” in these

funds ought to have triggered a due diligence review. They

now argue their failure to present a continuing-duty-tomonitor argument ought to be excused since the district

court’s summary judgment order precluded “any claim” of

this type. We are not persuaded.

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12 TIBBLE V. EDISON INT’L

The district court began its discussion of Section 413(1)’s

six-year time limitation by observing that “[t]here is no

‘continuing violation’ theory to claims subject to ERISA’s

statute of limitations.” Tibble v. Edison Int’l, 639 F. Supp. 2d

1074, 1086 (C.D. Cal. 2009) (quotingPhillips v. Alaska Hotel

& Rest. Emps. Pension Fund, 944 F.2d 509, 520 (9th Cir.

1991)). In Phillips, we held that Section 413(2) of ERISA,

the companion time limitation to the six-year limit at issue in

this case, bars actions where a plaintiff has actual knowledge

of a breach but does not sue within the required period. 

Phillips, 944 F.2d at 520. In so holding, we concluded that a

plaintiff may not subvert the actual-knowledge time

limitation by pointing to some later breach, where that breach

is “of the same kind and nature” as the one known to the

plaintiff. Id. at 521. Applying this insight to ERISA’s sixyear limitation in Section 413(1), the district court declared

that a party may not assert that “any failure to rectify the

breach constituted another discrete breach.” Tibble, 639 F.

Supp. 2d at 1086. Said another way, the court read Phillips

to stand for the proposition that a party may not disguise a

time-barred claim by styling the injury as a “failure to

rectify” a breach that occurred outside ERISA’s statutory

time-limitation.

Beneficiaries argue that the court forbade them from

raising a duty-to-monitor argument by barring claims that

were “of the same character” as those involving Edison’s

inclusion of the retail mutual funds in 1999. But the district

court’s order said nothing of the kind. Instead, the court held

only that a disguised time-barred claim could not be

transmuted into a timely claim by styling a past breach as a

“continuing violation.” The court’s order certainly precluded

beneficiaries from arguing that Edison breached its duty by

selecting retail-class mutual funds in 1999. But nothing in

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TIBBLE V. EDISON INT’L 13

the court’s order foreclosed beneficiaries from arguing that

Edison breached its dutywithin the statutory period by failing

to monitor these funds. The court’s summation of its holding

makes this point clear. The district court noted that: “the

initial decision to add retail mutual funds . . . as an option in

the Plan was made in 1999 and 2000,” along with other

decisions outside the relevant six-year period. Id. at 1120. 

“Thus,” the court concluded, “the prudence claims arising out

of these decisions are barred by the statute of limitations.” Id. 

When the court said prudence claims arising out of “these

decisions” are barred, it was obviously referring to “the initial

decision to add retail mutual funds” along with other

decisions occurring outside the statutory period.

Beneficiaries were barred from arguing about the initial

decision to include the retail-class mutual funds, not from

making a separate duty-to-monitor argument about those

funds.

2

The district court’s interaction with beneficiaries’ expert

Dr. Steven Pomerantz also confirms that their decision to

forego a duty-to-monitor argument was their own, not one the

court forced upon them. The court reiterated several times

during Pomerantz’s testimony that it “d[idn’t] understand the

connection between the name change [of two of the 1999

mutual funds] and the whole issue of why or why not

institutional shares should have been bought,” nor did it see

why it was “relevant as to whether . . . it was a name change

or the fund remained the same.” In fact, the court went so far

as to ask Pomerantz specifically whether Edison should have

removed the three funds even without any significant

changes: “Let’s say that these plans didn’t have a name

change . . . [w]ould you contend that . . . during the relevant

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14 TIBBLE V. EDISON INT’L

time period due diligence would have required the plan to

nevertheless buy an institutional share class, all things being

equal, assuming the institutional share class had a lower fee?”

Pomerantz declined the invitation. We think this exchange

clearly demonstrates that the court did not forbid

beneficiaries from arguing that Edison failed to monitor the

funds, nor did it force a “significant changes” theory upon

them. On the contrary, the district judge was showing

concern about why beneficiaries elected to pursue their

chosen theory. Beneficiaries’ trial strategy was their own

choice, not one mandated by the court.

3

Finally, beneficiaries’ own claims presented at trial

establish beyond any doubt that beneficiaries were not

forbidden from arguing that Edison possessed an ongoing

duty to monitor. Indeed, it is undisputed that the court

allowed beneficiaries to make just this kind of failure-tomonitor argument in relation to the Money Market Fund.

Like the retail-class mutual funds, the Money Market Fund

was added to the Plan more than six years before

beneficiaries commenced their suit. Moreover, like their

claim related to the retail-class mutual funds, beneficiaries

claimed that the selection of the Money Market Fund was

imprudent because it “requir[ed] Plan participants to pay

excessive . . . fees” from the first date it was added. 

However, unlike their claim relating to the retail-class mutual

funds, their challenge regarding the Money Market Fund

specifically alleged that Edison failed to monitor the fees of

such Fund during the relevant time period. The district court

did not forbid such a claim as violating ERISA’s six-year

limitation. On the contrary, the court considered this

argument on the merits and rejected it. Beneficiaries’ failure

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TIBBLE V. EDISON INT’L 15

to make a duty-to-monitor argument in relation to the retailclass mutual funds can hardly be attributed to the court,

where the court allowed that same argument to proceed in

relation to another supposedly imprudent investment that

originated outside the statutory period.

4

The foregoing demonstrates that beneficiaries did not

present their duty-to-monitor argument “sufficiently for the

trial court to rule on it”—indeed, they failed to present this

argument in relation to the contested mutual funds at all,

despite the clear opportunity to do so. See In re Mercury

Interactive, 618 F.3d at 992.

Moreover, no exception saves their forfeited argument.

There has been no “change in the law” that could justify

beneficiaries’ failure to raise a duty-to-monitor argument

about the mutual funds, since no law actually forbade them

from bringing it. Nor is the issue here “purely one of law” or

one in which the pertinent record has been fully developed. 

Id. (quoting Bolker v. Comm’r, 760 F.2d 1039, 1042 (9th Cir.

1985)). Indeed, the whole point of beneficiaries’ briefing on

remand is that this case must be sent back to the district court

because the factual record as it currently stands is inadequate

to decide the now-raised duty-to-monitor claim.

Finally, the record demonstrates that this is not “the

exceptional case” in which the Court should excuse a failure

to raise an argument “to prevent a miscarriage of justice or to

preserve the integrity of the judicial process.” Ruiz v. Affinity

Logistics Corp., 667 F.3d 1318, 1322 (9th Cir. 2012) (citation

and internal quotation marks omitted). Because the

beneficiaries were not precluded from making their duty-to-

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16 TIBBLE V. EDISON INT’L

monitor argument in the first place, there is no injustice in

forbidding them from doing so now. See Armstrong v.

Brown, 768 F.3d 975, 982 (9th Cir. 2014) (refusing to

consider an argument where a party had “ample opportunity”

to raise it below). The argument is forfeit.

B

Even setting aside beneficiaries’ failure to raise their

continuing-duty-to-monitor argument to the trial court, there

is little doubt they forfeited the argument by failing to present

it to us in their initial appeal. Thus, the claim is doubly

forfeit.

“We review only issues which are argued specifically and

distinctly in a party’s opening brief.” Cruz v. Int’l Collection

Corp., 673 F.3d 991, 998 (9th Cir. 2012). A party’s failure to

comply with this standard is “sufficient ground to justify

dismissal of an appeal,” including one taken on remand from

the Supreme Court. Christian Legal Soc’y v. Wu, 626 F.3d

483, 485 (9th Cir. 2010) (quoting In re O’Brien, 312 F.3d

1135, 1136 (9th Cir. 2002)).

In their opening brief submitted to us in their initial

appeal, beneficiaries contended that the district court erred in

ruling that their claims related to retail-class mutual funds

were time-barred under 29 U.S.C. § 1113. They sensibly

chose not to repeat the “changed circumstances” argument

that they offered to the district court, since the district court’s

factual determinations on that theorywould have been subject

to a deferential standard of review. See Navajo Nation v. U.S.

Forest Serv., 535 F.3d 1058, 1067 (9th Cir. 2008) (en banc). 

Rather, they argued that the district court erred because

“ERISA’s six-year limitation incorporates the continuing

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TIBBLE V. EDISON INT’L 17

violation doctrine.” According to beneficiaries, their claim

was timely because Edison’s failure to “switch[] from retail

to institutional class shares” continued the breach that

occurred when the funds were added to the Plan, not because

Edison failed to adequately monitor the mutual funds

thereafter.

Beneficiaries now attempt to argue that they raised the

continuing-duty-to-monitor argument in their brief, insofar as

they asserted that “[d]efendants had a continuing duty to

ensure that each of the Plans’ [sic] investment options was

and remained prudent and had reasonable expenses.” 

However, as Edison pointed out during the original appeal,

that broad contention was not actually in dispute. What was

in dispute was beneficiaries’ assertion that Edison could be

held liable for “their breach of duty in keeping these funds in

the Plan in the six years before commencement of this

action.” Responding to that argument, we concluded that

“the act of designating an investment for inclusion starts the

six-year period under section 413(1)(A) for claims asserting

imprudence in the design of the plan menu.” Tibble, 729 F.3d

at 1119 (emphasis added). We correspondingly concluded

that “[c]haracterizing the mere continued offering of a plan

option, without more,” would render ERISA’s time limitation

meaningless. Id. at 1120 (emphasis added).

In short, beneficiaries never asserted Edison violated its

duty by failing to monitor the retail-class mutual funds; they

asserted only that we ought to read ERISA as excusing an

otherwise time-barred lawsuit where the effects of a past

breach continue into the future. Because beneficiaries never

presented to us an argument about an ongoing duty-tomonitor, it is “elementary” that beneficiaries should not be

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18 TIBBLE V. EDISON INT’L

allowed a second bite at the apple on remand. See Nw. Ind.

Tel. Co. v. FCC, 872 F.2d 465, 470 (D.C. Cir. 1989).

III

As the record amply demonstrates, beneficiaries did not

raise an ongoing-duty-to-monitor argument at any point in

this litigation before their petition to the Supreme Court. 

Fittingly, the district court’s judgment is

AFFIRMED.

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