| Biography:
Myron joined Proskauer's Labor and Employment Department in 1984 after serving
as a law clerk for the Honorable I. Leo Glasser of the United States District
Court for the Eastern District of New York. He became a member of the Firm in
1991. Myron now supervises the bulk of the Firm's employee benefits plan litigation
activities in its New York office, but also has handled a broad array of other
labor and employment litigation matters.
In the employee benefits field, Myron has represented both single employer
and multiemployer plans, plan fiduciaries, employer contributors to multiemployer
plans, and professional advisors to plans. He has had extensive experience in
all types of litigation matters including: individual and class action lawsuits
alleging violations of ERISA's fiduciary duty and prohibited transaction provisions,
and ERISA's age discrimination and minimal accrual rules; challenges to plan
denials of claims for benefits; suits challenging plan amendments, plan terminations,
and the termination of retiree benefits; actions challenging particular plan
investment decisions; delinquent contribution claims and withdrawal liability
claims brought against employer contributors to multiemployer plans; Pension
Benefit Guaranty Corporation proceedings; and United States Departments of Justice
and Labor investigations and lawsuits.
The depth and variety of Myron's ERISA litigation practice is evident from
his present and recent endeavors, which include: handling a series of investigations
and/or lawsuits dealing with breach of fiduciary duty claims against the trustees
of 401(k) plans in connection with the plans' investment in stock of the corporate
plan sponsor; representing the independent fiduciaries responsible for investigating
and prosecuting claims for recovery of many millions of dollars in losses associated
with the construction of a hotel owned by a pension fund; and defending several
class action lawsuits, including three seeking recovery of interest on delayed
benefit payments; two seeking to invalidate a pension plan’s cash balance features; and one contending that a multiemployer pension plan’s benefit formula was illegally back loaded.
Among Myron's earlier achievements was his supervision of a series of lawsuits
brought on behalf of the Mason Tenders District Council Trust Funds against
various former Fund trustees and service providers. These efforts, combined
with his coordination of settlements with the Departments of Labor and Justice,
resulted in the recovery of millions of dollars in investment losses that the
Funds suffered when they were poorly administered and under organized crime
influence.
Earlier in his career, Myron also played a principal role in a series of landmark
suits in the Second Circuit concerning fiduciary, co-fiduciary and non-fiduciary
liability arising from multimillion-dollar losses in plan investments. Other
achievements include the successful management of a series of related lawsuits
alleging various breaches of fiduciary duty and prohibited transactions arising
from plan real estate investment losses; and the defense of consolidated lawsuits
raising novel issues concerning the interplay of ERISA's delinquent contribution
law and the jurisdictional dispute mechanisms in the construction industry.
Outside the field of employee benefits, Myron has had extensive experience
in class action employment discrimination and sexual harassment lawsuits. He
recently settled a class action lawsuit brought on behalf of 2000 railroad employees,
alleging racial discrimination in discipline and promotion. The case raised
cutting edge issues on the scope of class certification in the aftermath of
the Civil Rights Act Amendments, and has led to two precedent-setting decisions
by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Earlier in his
career, Myron was involved in Meritor Savings Bank, FSB v. Vinson, the
landmark Supreme Court decision on environmental harassment, and the successful
appeal in a sexual harassment suit against Penthouse Magazine that originally
resulted in an award of $4 million in punitive damages after trial.
Myron is a graduate of SUNY-Binghamton and Columbia Law School, where he was
an articles editor for the Law Review and was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar
in each year that he attended. He actively participates in the Employee Benefits
Committee of the Labor and Employment Section of the American Bar Association,
in connection with which he is a Senior Editor of the publication, Employee
Benefits Law. He has written and spoken extensively on both employee benefits
and employment litigation, and has authored several articles that have appeared
in The New York Law Journal and elsewhere.
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