Author: Bailey Glasser

Partner Todd Mathews Featured in Maryland Matters on Child Victims Act Overhaul

Bailey Glasser Mass Torts partner Todd Mathews was quoted in Maryland Matters on the impact of Maryland’s newly signed House Bill 1378, which lowers compensation caps for survivors of institutional child sexual abuse and sets a May 31 deadline to file under the previous law.

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Bailey Glasser Mass Torts partner Todd Mathews was quoted in Maryland Matters on the impact of Maryland’s newly signed House Bill 1378, which lowers compensation caps for survivors of institutional child sexual abuse and sets a May 31 deadline to file under the previous law.

Todd and the Bailey Glasser team represent thousands of survivors abused in Maryland’s juvenile detention centers. He indicated the firm would be part of a challenge to the new law, stating: “We will vigorously oppose this clearly unconstitutional bill, in order to protect the Survivors, as the State and Governor Moore have clearly failed them.”

The article notes that the law, effective June 1, 2025, raises constitutional concerns due to the reduced compensation, the narrow filing window, and its unequal treatment of claims against public versus private institutions. For more insights, read the full Maryland Matters article here.

In 2023, Bailey Glasser, alongside nearly two dozen firms, filed lawsuits on behalf of over 4,500 survivors of sexual abuse perpetrated by staff members at Maryland juvenile detention centers. In addition to Todd Mathews, the Bailey Glasser team consists of founding partner Brian Glasser, Mass Torts Practice Group leader David Selby II, Institutional Abuse & Neglect Team leader Sharon Iskra, and lawyers Aliya Khalidi and Samira Bode.

Learn more about our work in this matter by visiting our Maryland Juvenile Hall Sexual Abuse page.

Gregory Porter a Panelist on Private Equity in 401(k) at ABA Tax Meeting

ERISA Practice Group leader, Greg Porter will speak at the ABA Tax Meeting on the panel titled, “Private Equity Investment Through Your 401(k) Plan: An Idea Whose Time Has Come?”

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Bailey Glasser’s ERISA Practice Group Leader, Gregory Porter, will be a featured panelist at the American Bar Association’s 2025 May Tax Meeting, taking place May 8–10 in Washington, D.C.

Greg will speak on the panel titled, “Private Equity Investment Through Your 401(k) Plan: An Idea Whose Time Has Come?”, described as stated:

“As markets continue to change and with the change in administration, private equity funds are again looking to expand their reach into defined contribution plans. This panel will discuss the current state of play and the rewards as well as the risks of offering private equity funds in 401(k) plan lineups.”

Greg has extensive trial and class action experience, having recovered hundreds of millions of dollars for employees and retirees in complex pension, 401(k), and ESOP litigation. Greg currently represents Intel employees who lost hundreds of millions of dollars when Intel saddled its 401(k) plan with expensive and poor performing hedge and private equity funds. He also recently led the Bailey Glasser team representing 14 law professors in an amicus brief in the Supreme Court case Cunningham v. Cornell University, where the Court issued a unanimous decision in favor of employees in a fiduciary mismanagement case.

To learn more about Greg, visit his bio page here.

Don’t miss this important conversation at the intersection of retirement planning, regulation, and investment strategy. For more information and to register for the event, visit: https://events.americanbar.org/event/04fd316d-9a78-4688-a015-6b517d5db46c/summary

“A Pragmatic Decision”: Mark Boyko Weighs in on ERISA Supreme Court Case

ERISA Partner Mark Boyko is quoted in PSCA’s coverage of the unanimous ruling by the Supreme Court in Cunningham v. Cornell University, calling the employee-friendly decision a “common-sense opinion.”

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Mark Boyko, partner in Bailey Glasser’s ERISA Practice Group, is quoted in Plan Sponsor Council of America’s (PSCA) coverage of the unanimous ruling last week by the Supreme Court of the United States in Cunningham v. Cornell University, calling the employee-friendly decision a “common-sense opinion.”

In the decision, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the rights of employees and retirees to bring lawsuits under ERISA when their retirement plans are alleged to be mismanaged and ruled that plaintiffs need only assert the existence of a prohibited transaction causing injury to proceed past a motion to dismiss.

BG partner Mark Boyko, a pioneer in ERSIA class action litigation, described the unanimous decision as “pragmatic” because it “recognizes that there is limited information that the plaintiff has,” prior to discovery. As a result of the opinion, Boyko believes that there will be more cases related to self-dealing and will “cause fiduciaries engaged in prohibited transactions that they would benefit from to think twice.”

A Bailey Glasser ERISA team led by Mark Boyko and BG’s ERISA Practice Group leader, Greg Porter, represented fourteen law professors who filed an amicus brief in the case supporting the position of the employees and retirees. The matter stemmed from an earlier dismissal in favor of fiduciaries who were alleged to have mismanaged the 403(b) plan available to Cornell University employees.

For additional insights, view the full PSCA article, Reactions to the ERISA Supreme Court Case, here.

To learn more about Mark Boyko, visit his bio page here. For additional insights on this Supreme Court decision, read our previous article here.

BG Partner Greg Porter Quoted by Bloomberg Law

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Gregory Porter, Bailey Glasser’s ERISA Practice Group Leader, is quoted in Bloomberg Law’s coverage of the unanimous ruling last week by the Supreme Court of the United States in an employee-friendly ruling that may expedite federal benefits laws claims to discovery.

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the rights of employees and retirees to bring lawsuits under ERISA when their plans are alleged to be mismanaged. The Court reversed an earlier dismissal in favor of fiduciaries to the 403(b) plan available to Cornell University employees, and in doing so upheld the views of most lower courts that affirmative defenses to alleged “prohibited transactions” under ERISA are affirmative defenses which must be plead and proven by a defendant, and that a plaintiff need not rebut any or all of the potentially available exemptions at the pleading stage.

Greg Porter, and BG partner Mark Boyko, represented fourteen law professors who filed an amicus brief in the case supporting the position of the employees and retirees.

ERISA law was enacted in 1974 to defend against companies and unions tapping into pension funds as if they were operating reserves and treats virtually any transaction as a potential conflict of interest. A separate section later in the statute lays out 21 statutory exemptions for transactions that are “reasonable” or “necessary” and empowers the United States Labor Department to issue more. That separation—a few paragraphs of text between sections 406 and 408 in the law—means Congress intended the exemptions to be treated as affirmative defenses, shifting the responsibility to prove compliance from the plaintiffs to the defendants, the Supreme Court ruled in a decision authored by Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

In contrast to ERISA practitioners who state in the article that they are concerned about a flood of litigation, Greg Porter explained that in his experience, “There’s going to be more litigation here, but it’s not going to be a sea change.”

To read the full Bloomberg Law article, visit this link.

SCOTUS Rules Unanimously In Favor of Retiree & Employee Litigation Rights

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The Supreme Court of the United States issued a unanimous decision in favor of employees and retirees claiming illegal transactions involving employee benefit plans. The Court said that ERISA’s prohibited transaction rules must be enforced as written and courts shouldn’t attempt to alter the plain language to make it harder for employees to sue. The Court also ruled that various exemptions to prohibited transactions are affirmative defenses, meaning defendants have the burden to prove them and plaintiffs don’t need to make allegations in their complaints. The Court reversed the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which had adopted a much more employer-friendly rule in favor of fiduciaries to the 403(b) plan for Cornell University employees.

Prohibited transaction claims are an important subset of available claims for employees and retirees seeking to protect their retirement savings and other assets in ERISA plans. This includes not only 403(b) and 401(k) plan litigation, but also ESOPs, pensions, and certain health plans. This means employees will only need to allege facts that a transaction between a plan involving some related party occurred to satisfy the pleading requirements. Bailey Glasser’s ERISA Practice Group leader, Greg Porter, and ERISA partner Mark Boyko represented fourteen law professors who filed an amicus brief in the case requesting the Court to reverse the dismissal.

The case is Casey Cunningham et al. v. Cornell University et al., case number 23-1007.

Learn more about this decision from Law360, visit this link.  

For learn more about Greg Porter, visit here.  

For more on partner Mark Boyko, visit this link. 

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