The jury found that Yale breached fiduciary duties and cause plan to pay excessive fees; at the same time the jury found that a fiduciary following a prudent process could have made the same decisions and awarded $0 in damages.

Several recent decisions handed down by federal appellate courts offer some good news for plan fiduciaries. In each of these cases the courts affirmed dismissals of fiduciary litigation, concluding that the facts alleged were just not enough to support a claim. The dismissals were based on the courts’ assessment that even if the general facts alleged were true (e.g., that other plans paid less in recordkeeping or management fees or that other funds performed better) –those facts would not show that the actions taken by the fiduciaries for these specific plans were not prudent.

The Supreme Court’s decision leaves unanswered many difficult questions facing fiduciaries.