Photo of Lindsey H. Chopin

Lindsey H. Chopin is a principal in the New Orleans, Louisiana, office of Jackson Lewis P.C. and a member of the firm’s ERISA Complex Class Action, Employee Benefits and Class Action groups.

Lindsey focuses her practice on the defense of complex ERISA class-actions filed against public and private single employer ERISA plan sponsors and fiduciaries, as well as multi-employer plans and fiduciaries and ERISA plan services providers. She has litigated a wide variety of class action claims, including 401(k) fee claims, stock drop claims, defined benefit mortality assumption claims, “church plan” and “government plan” claims, health and welfare plan claims, and ERISA Section 510 claims. Lindsey also litigates ERISA benefit claims and claims involving non-ERISA plans.

Lindsey is the author of several ERISA-related articles, including an article focusing on ERISA fee litigation that appeared in the Benefits Law Journal, and is a frequent speaker on ERISA and class action litigation issues, including e-discovery best practices and ethics and professionalism when using social media in litigation. She is a senior editor of Chapter 15 of Bloomberg BNA’s Employee Benefits Law treatise and a contributing author to the ERISA Fiduciary Answers Book and Chapter 39 of the sixth edition of Bloomberg BNA’s ERISA Litigation treatise published in November 2017.

Prior to joining Jackson Lewis, Lindsey practiced complex ERISA litigation for five years at a large, national firm and served as a one-year term clerk for the Honorable Carl J. Barbier in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana.

While attending Loyola University School of Law, Lindsey was the articles and symposium editor of the Loyola Law Review and received the “Best Casenote Award” for her casenote analyzing the impact of Kasten v. St. Gobain Performance Plastics Corp., 563 U.S. 1 (2011), an FLSA matter decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Prior to attending law school and practicing law, Lindsey was a teachNOLA fellow and taught high school French in New Orleans’ public schools.

The Fourth Circuit affirmed Aon Hewitt Investment Consulting’s trial victory in a 250,000-member class action suit alleging that Aon breached ERISA’s fiduciary duties.

Aon was initially the Lowe’s 401(k) plan’s investment advisor and later was engaged as the plan’s 3(38) delegated fiduciary. The plaintiffs’ fiduciary breach claims alleged that, after being retained as a delegated

The Third Circuit refused to enforce a mandatory arbitration clause with a class action waiver in an ESOP, finding that the class action waiver deprived participants of statutory rights. The ESOP plan added the clause at issue in 2017. When plaintiffs filed a putative class action in 2019 asserting fiduciary breach and prohibited transaction claims

Is a new wave of ERISA fiduciary litigation targeting group health plan sponsors on the horizon? There have already been a few examples of health plan fee cases, such as claims challenging the billing practice between insurers and their subcontractors or challenging commissions paid in connection with multi-employer plans. Recent advertisements by the class action

Plaintiffs must plead a “sound basis for comparison—a meaningful benchmark” — to sustain their claims of imprudent investment and excessive fee against a 401(k) plan, the federal appeals court in St. Louis has held, dismissing a class action lawsuit for breached of fiduciary duties under ERISA. Matousek v. MidAmerican Energy Co.No. 21-2749 (8th

The DOL’s cybersecurity investigation into Alight Solutions, LLC, a retirement plan recordkeeper, has queued up court rulings on the reach of the DOL’s subpoena power that may have important implications for ERISA plan sponsors and their respective recordkeepers and service providers moving forward. First, the Seventh Circuit will weigh in on whether the district court

A California district court recently foreclosed a former independent contractor’s claims for benefits from ERISA-governed plans when it found that plaintiff was not a “participant” as defined by ERISA and thus did not have statutory standing to assert his ERISA claims. Alders v. YUM! Brands, Inc., No. 8:21-cv-01191-PSG-DFM (C.D. Cal. Feb. 1, 2022).

After working

A Massachusetts district court recently ordered defendants in an ERISA fiduciary breach case to produce certain communications with their in-house and outside counsel, rejecting defendants’ argument that the communications occurred in the context of attorneys advising a 401(k) plan’s sponsor and fiduciaries as to their potential fiduciary liability. In re GE ERISA Litig., 2022

The Third Circuit will review a Pennsylvania district court’s decision to certify a 60,000+ person class in an ERISA fiduciary breach lawsuit claiming mismanagement of a defined contribution plan’s investments and recordkeeping fees. This appeal queues up guidance on a hotly litigated issue in recent ERISA cases:  can defined contribution plan participants challenge the prudence

Recently, in Davis v. Salesforce.com, a California district court dismissed for the second time claims alleging that the defendant 401(k) plan fiduciaries breached their ERISA fiduciary duties by retaining overpriced and underperforming investment options on the plan’s investment menu. Our previous post on that dismissal is available here.

That decision is one in

Aligning itself with other circuit courts that have ruled on the issue, the Ninth Circuit recently held that ERISA does not bar forum selection clauses in benefit plans.  The background of the case and the Ninth Circuit’s ruling are straightforward.  Plaintiff filed a putative class action in the Northern District of California challenging the management