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Ashley Bryan Abel is a principal in the Greenville, South Carolina, office of Jackson Lewis P.C. He has extensive experience as lead counsel in single plaintiff, multi-plaintiff, and class action employment litigation as well as employee benefits litigation.

Ashley’s employee benefits practice includes the defense of private and public employers, benefit plans, insurers, plan fiduciaries and service providers against ERISA and benefits lawsuits alleging claims for breach of fiduciary duty, benefits due, statutory penalties and others. He also defends employers and executives against single plaintiff and class action litigation involving wage and hour, discrimination, harassment and other employment law claims.

Ashley has appeared as lead counsel in over 25 states and in all United States Courts of Appeals. He has a distinguished list of case victories across the country for clients including Liberty Mutual, Pfizer, Wal-Mart, Beverly Enterprises, Liberty Life, Deloitte, IBM, Michelin, Pepsi Bottling Group and ABB.

Ashley also counsels clients, presents speeches, and conducts training across the country in areas of employee benefits and employment law. Recent topics of these engagements include fiduciary risk management, human resources best practices, electronic discovery, class action issues and strategies, and crisis management.

Ashley is a certified specialist in Employment and Labor Law by the S.C. Supreme Court and was named as a “10 Best” Employment & Labor Law attorney for client satisfaction in South Carolina.

Away from work, Ashley enjoys hiking with his wife, golf, cars, his four children, and their dog Max.

An ERISA action alleging breaches of fiduciary duty recently cleared the pleadings stage in Minnesota district court, narrowly avoiding a complete dismissal. See Schave v. CentraCare Health Sys., No. 22-cv-1555 (WMW/LIB), 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 13786 (D. Minn. Jan. 27, 2023).

In Schave, a CentraCare employee challenged the healthcare provider’s handling of its

On April 15, 2022, participants in the U.A. Plumbers & Steamfitters Local 22 Pension Fund filed a petition for panel and en banc rehearing of the Second Circuit’s ruling in favor of the pension plan’s decision to retroactively require plan participants to choose between either ceasing their post-retirement employment or foregoing early retirement benefits. See