Court Opinion

ID: 9814700
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 00:03:48.128408+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:42:30.861417
License: Public Domain

HELENE N. WHITE, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
The dispositive question is whether section 9.4 grants program participants the right to direct that the accrued value of their benefits be rolled over into a qualified IRA, as Scheib contends, or whether that section simply provides that if a distribution of an employee’s accrued credit balance is made in a form other than as one of a series of periodic payments, the employee has a right to roll the distribution over into a qualified IRA. I agree that the administrator’s interpretation of the plan consistent with the latter meaning is not arbitrary and capricious. The language of the section is ambiguous, and the right to elect a lump-sum distribution that can be rolled over is found nowhere else in the plan. I therefore join in the affir-mance.