## Facts

- Former employees of Kaiser Steel Corp. participated in the Kaiser Steel Retirement Plan, a defined-benefit pension plan governed by ERISA.
- Hewitt Associates served as the plan’s outside actuarial consultant during a period when Kaiser phased out steelmaking operations, triggering substantial early retirements.
- The complaint alleged that Hewitt failed to revise actuarial assumptions to reflect increased costs from early retirements, contributing to inadequate plan funding.
- The plan ultimately became underfunded, and the PBGC terminated it; participants received only PBGC-guaranteed benefits, generally less than the plan’s vested benefits.
- Participants sued Hewitt, alleging (as relevant on review) that Hewitt, a nonfiduciary service provider, knowingly participated in plan fiduciaries’ breaches of fiduciary duty.
- The district court dismissed the complaint; the Ninth Circuit affirmed; the Supreme Court granted review limited to whether ERISA authorizes money damages against nonfiduciaries for knowing participation.

## Issues

1. Whether ERISA § 502(a)(3)’s authorization of “appropriate equitable relief” permits retrospective compensatory money damages against a nonfiduciary who knowingly participates in an ERISA fiduciary’s breach of duty.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court affirmed the Ninth Circuit’s judgment (5–4).
- Assuming without deciding that § 502(a)(3) allows a cause of action against nonfiduciaries for knowing participation, the Court held that the remedy sought—making the plan whole via a money judgment—was compensatory damages.
- Compensatory damages are legal relief, not “appropriate equitable relief” within the meaning of § 502(a)(3).
- Because the requested relief was not equitable, the claim was properly dismissed.

## Legal Principles

- ERISA § 502(a)(3) authorizes only those forms of relief “typically available in equity,” not all remedies that might be awarded by a court applying trust-law concepts.
- A demand that a defendant pay money to compensate for past losses is classic legal relief, even when framed as enforcing ERISA duties.
- Courts should not expand ERISA’s enforcement scheme beyond the remedies Congress specified, particularly where the statute distinguishes equitable relief from legal or other remedies.

## Conclusion

ERISA § 502(a)(3) does not allow plan participants to recover compensatory money damages from nonfiduciary service providers alleged to have knowingly participated in a fiduciary breach, because such damages are not “appropriate equitable relief.”


Mertens v. Hewitt Assocs., 508 U.S. 248 (1993)