Opinion ID: 201479
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: identifying the plan

Text: 10 Underlying the dispute is a disagreement about which documents constitute the Plan. John Hancock urges that the Plan consists only of the undated version of The John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company Pension Plan which the former employees attached to their amended complaint as an exhibit. We will refer to this as the 1995 Restatement, as John Hancock admits it was a true and correct copy of the Pension Plan as of January 1 of that year. John Hancock contends it is the operative Plan document, and that it alone governs the former employees' rights as asserted in Count I. 11 The former employees, by contrast, refer to this document as the Partial Plan and describe it as a mere non-integrated description of the technical terms of the Plan which must be supplemented in order to present a complete statement of the Plan's terms. The former employees do not present a competing version of an integrated Plan document. Rather, they assert that a number of items must be considered along with the 1995 Restatement. They refer to the 1994 amendment as the cornerstone of their claim, and state that they also follow the path carved by the District Court by relying on the 1991 summary plan description and its 1996 update to provide additional terms. The summary plan description is a booklet entitled, Your Benefits Program: Reflecting Changing Needs, 3 and the 1996 update is labeled as such. The former employees find additional support for their interpretation of the Plan from documents created around the time of the 1994 Amendment, including a transcript of comments made by Stephen Brown, John Hancock's Chairman and CEO, at a company meeting on October 20, 1994, and a letter of the same date from Brown to employees. 12 In its recitation of undisputed facts, the district court quoted portions of the 1995 Restatement, the 1994 amendment, the 1996 update to the Plan's summary plan description, and various letters, brochures, and other documents distributed by John Hancock to its employees. Likewise, the district court considered these documents in granting summary judgment on Count I, the benefits claim, but it provided no explanation as to their relevance or admissibility. 13 John Hancock argues that the summary plan description must not be considered in this case unless the former employees prove reliance on or prejudice resulting from their reading of that document. The district court directed the parties to defer briefing the reliance issue until after the court ruled on Count I. 14 John Hancock's argument is in line with our holdings in Mauser v. Raytheon Co. Pension Plan, 239 F.3d 51 (1st Cir.2001) and Bachelder v. Comm. Satellite Corp., 837 F.2d 519 (1st Cir.1988), where we held that other appropriate equitable relief may be available under 29 U.S.C. § 1132(a)(3) if the summary plan description violates ERISA's disclosure provision, Mauser, 239 F.3d at 54-55, and the participant demonstrates reasonable or significant reliance on the summary plan description, Bachelder, 837 F.2d at 523. In Mauser, we further held that the availability of other appropriate relief precludes claims for breach of fiduciary duty and equitable estoppel based on alleged misrepresentations in the summary plan description. 239 F.3d at 57-58. See also Govoni v. Bricklayers, Masons & Plasterers Int'l Union, 732 F.2d 250, 252 (1st Cir.1984) (Breyer, J.) (To secure relief based on the summary plan description, the plan participant must show some significant reliance upon, or possible prejudice flowing from, the faulty plan description.). Not all circuits have this requirement. See, e.g., Burstein v. Ret. Account Plan For Employees of Allegheny Health Educ. & Research Found., 334 F.3d 365, 380-81 (3d Cir.2003) (collecting cases and concluding: Upon consideration of the `reliance' issue, we now hold that a plan participant who bases a claim for plan benefits on a conflict between an SPD and plan document need neither plead nor prove reliance on the SPD.). 15 John Hancock further asserts that the other documents must not be considered with respect to any of the claims. The district court took the plaintiffs' approach, considering the 1995 Restatement, various summary plan descriptions, benefits statements the former employees received from John Hancock, and other unidentified documents attributed to John Hancock's CEO and its Human Resources Department. 16 John Hancock contends that the 1995 Restatement is the operative version of its pension benefit plan, and the former employees offer no competing version. We must identify the plan for a number of reasons. First, ERISA requires that a qualified plan be governed by written documents. The statute requires that every qualified employee benefit plan shall be established and maintained pursuant to a written instrument. 29 U.S.C. § 1102(a)(1). The purpose of this requirement is to ensure that participants know their rights and obligations under the plan, Wilson v. Moog Auto., Inc. Pension Plan & Trust for UAW Employees, 193 F.3d 1004, 1008 (8th Cir.1999), and to provide some degree of certainty in the administration of benefits, Feifer v. Prudential Ins. Co. of America, 306 F.3d 1202, 1208 (2d Cir.2002). Second, ERISA requires that the plan's administrator must act in accordance with the documents and instruments governing the plan, 29 U.S.C. § 1104(a)(1)(D). A court cannot determine whether an administrator reasonably interpreted a plan without knowing what documents and instruments set forth the terms of the plan. 17 The 1995 Restatement constitutes the governing Plan document in this case. As John Hancock points out, it is the restated version of the Plan that includes all of the amendments through January 1 of that year. The 1994 amendment has been integrated into the 1995 Restatement and is not a document to be separately considered. The 1995 Restatement is a comprehensive recitation of the terms of the Plan that, standing alone, informs participants of their rights and obligations. See Pegram v. Herdrich, 530 U.S. 211, 223, 120 S.Ct. 2143, 147 L.Ed.2d 164 (2000) (Rules governing collection of premiums, definition of benefits, submission of claims, and resolution of disagreements over entitlement to services are the sorts of provisions that constitute a plan.). The former employees offer no competing version of the governing Plan document and point to no ambiguous language in the 1995 Restatement. Thus, there is no genuine issue as to the identity of the plan. Our task, therefore, is to determine whether John Hancock abused its discretion in denying liberalized retirement benefits to the former employees under the terms of the 1995 Restatement. With the governing plan document identified, extraneous documents are irrelevant to our determination of the former employees' right to relief under Count I. Bellino v. Schlumberger Techs., Inc., 944 F.2d 26, 32 (1st Cir.1991) (Basic contract and trust principles preclude federal courts from considering extrinsic evidence where the ERISA terms in question are unambiguous.). See also Liston v. Unum Corp. Officer Severance Plan, 330 F.3d 19, 25 (1st Cir.2003) (Liston's suit is for benefits that Liston says were promised to her by the plan, ... so the central issue must always be what the plan promised to Liston and whether the plan delivered.); Harris v. Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Inc., 208 F.3d 274, 279 (1st Cir.2000) (A primary purpose of ERISA is to ensure the integrity and primacy of written plans....) (internal quotation marks omitted); Perry v. New England Bus. Svc., Inc., 347 F.3d 343, 346 & n. 3 (1st Cir.2003) (the court gives the straightforward language in the Plan its natural meaning and stating that extrinsic evidence — i.e., informal communications — cannot alter the clear and unambiguous terms of the Plan); Helfrich v. Carle Clinic Ass'n P.C., 328 F.3d 915, 917 (7th Cir.) (Employer-prepared summaries, by contrast [to SPDs], have no footing in ERISA and could not be enforced against the plan without disregarding the boundary between two distinct entities: the plan and the employer.), cert. denied, 540 U.S. 1073, 124 S.Ct. 924, 157 L.Ed.2d 743 (2003).