Law360 (August 14, 2026, 7:45 PM EDT) — A recent Fourth Circuit decision in a retirement plan dispute between tobacco giant Altria and an ex-worker underscored how service provider contracts can introduce snags in litigation, with benefits attorneys warning that employers may want to review documents with the potential for disclosure in mind.
A three-judge panel in a published opinion on Aug. 10 affirmed in part and vacated in part a Virginia federal court’s March 2025 decision that handed a complete win to Altria, its retirement plan and the company’s 401(k) plan recordkeeper Fidelity in the case from ex-worker Richard Kelly.
Kelly, who was laid off by Altria in 2010, brought the Employee Retirement Income Security Act suit in November 2023. He alleged that Altria and Fidelity didn’t move quickly enough to liquidate his 401(k) assets so he could invest the cash in his Goldman Sachs account in anticipation of a stock market bump following the 2020 presidential election.
The panel affirmed the lower court’s decision to hand Altria and Fidelity an early win on Kelly’s claims that they breached fiduciary duties or unreasonably deprived him of benefits, but reopened the case on a claim that Kelly’s retirement plan administrator refused to provide him a plan operating document. That document took the form of the contract between Fidelity and Altria, called an administrative services agreement.
So while the appellate court largely upheld dismissal and affirmed a win for the defense on the merits of the core allegations in the case — ERISA breach of fiduciary duty and denial of benefits claims over the timing of his retirement plan distribution — a dispute over providing plan documents led the panel to restart the case.
Michelle Roberts, founding principal of Roberts Disability Law PC and a plaintiff-side attorney, said the panel’s holding on the administrative services agreement was an “important” aspect of the ruling, because parties to federal benefits litigation frequently dispute which plan documents are subject to disclosure.
“In that way, this is a plaintiff-friendly decision, despite the loss,” Roberts said.
Decision Could Spur Contract Reviews
Defense-side practitioners highlighted how the panel’s holding on contracts potentially being subject to disclosure in ERISA litigation could impact both health and welfare and retirement benefits administration, and might spur employers to go through their agreements to make sure they can provide them in response to worker requests.
Brian Bartels, partner and head of the health and welfare benefits practice at Kutak Rock LLP and a defense-side attorney, said the decision “potentially creates challenges for employers, including when a services agreement includes strong confidentiality and proprietary information provisions that restrict or prohibit its disclosure of confidential information.”
Bartels said given the decision, “employers are going to have to work very closely with their third-party administrators in determining how to disclose services agreements when participants request them to help ensure that they’re not violating terms of their services agreements, particularly the confidentiality requirements.”
Anne Tyler Hall, founder and managing partner at Hall Benefits Law, also said she expected employers and service providers in the Fourth Circuit to take a look at their contracts given the decision.
“Maybe we’ll see plan sponsors and service providers try to segment out, maybe the fee schedule, from the actual text” of the contract, Hall said, giving an example of what might change.
Document Fights Still Expected
Attorneys from both sides of the bar said they expected parties in federal benefits litigation to continue to argue over the administrative services agreement being subject to public disclosure, given how common it has been for employers to deny benefit plan service provider contracts when requested.
“It’s very common to get requests for services agreements, and I think most all plan fiduciaries say no, you can’t have it,” said Erin Weber, an employer-side partner with Winston Taylor.
Weber said the decision suggests employers should now be prepared to take a different approach.
“If it seems to be a legitimate claim, and it seems like the person might be litigious, it might be worth going through and seeing what you can provide, to at least be able to say that you provided everything that you could,” Weber said.
Roberts, at Roberts Disability Law, said “we deal with this a lot,” regarding employer denials when workers request service provider contracts involving their health benefit plans.
“We always have fights over disclosures, providing plan documents, and what does that mean?” Roberts said, noting that sometimes employers will only provide summaries of plan documents and not the underlying actual documents workers request.
“We get so much pushback,” she said.
9th Circ. Decision Stands Opposite
In its decision, the Fourth Circuit panel said that its documents finding aligned with other reported decisions from sister circuits, including the Tenth Circuit in 2024 in M.S. v. Premera Blue Cross and the Seventh Circuit in 2009 in Mondry v. Am. Fam. Mut. Ins. Co.
Those decisions contrast, however, with the Ninth Circuit’s recent unpublished holding in a single-plaintiff dispute from a Netflix employee health plan participant, where a three-judge panel backed a lower court’s holding that found administrative services agreements weren’t subject to disclosure under ERISA.
That case is now on petition from the participant to the U.S. Supreme Court, and justices set a conference in September. Netflix argued in a response to the health plan participant’s petition filed in June that there was not a split because the Ninth Circuit’s decision was unpublished, and that the Seventh and Tenth circuits had ordered disclosure of the administrative services agreements in different contexts than what was present in the Netflix health plan participant’s case.
The participant who sued, Mark Zavislak, participated in a Netflix employee health plan as a beneficiary of his wife, who was a former Netflix employee.
Hall, at Hall Benefits Law, said the decision underscored how plaintiffs attorneys have a new potential foothold for litigation in the Fourth Circuit.
“It gives plaintiffs another opportunity, kind of a free litigation strategy, for asking for all these documents. And then if the instructive third-party administrators’ administrative services agreements aren’t included in that document request, then they have another potential claim for penalties,” Hall said.
–Editing by Bruce Goldman and Rich Mills.
