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U.S. Supreme Court Oral Arguments

Cunningham v. Cornell University

U.S. Supreme Court Oral Arguments

Oyez

National, Government & Organizations

4.6640 Ratings

🗓️ 22 January 2025

⏱️ 91 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

A case in which the Court held that a plaintiff can state a claim under a provision of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) that bars a plan fiduciary from knowingly engaging in a transaction that is an exchange of goods or services between the plan and anyone barred from doing business with the plan, simply by alleging that such a transaction occurred.

Transcript

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0:00.0

We'll hear argument next in case 23107, Cunningham v. Cornell University. Mr. Wang?

0:07.4

Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the Court, when Congress enacted ERISA, it identified a number of prohibited transactions and codified that understanding in 29 U.S.C. Section 1106.

0:19.8

In Congress's view, these transactions pose a special risk of being

0:23.9

potentially harmful to the plan, generally because they involved a party in interest, which includes

0:29.2

a fiduciary's relative or an officer or an owner of the plan, or a person providing services

0:34.2

to the plan. Petitioners here have identified a transaction that falls within the text of Section 1106,

0:42.0

and the Second Circuit's decision to dismiss that claim prior to discovery was incorrect for three

0:47.4

reasons.

0:48.7

First, text and structure.

0:51.2

Congress frequently writes laws where it puts liability in one part of the statute

0:54.9

and exceptions to liability in another. And when it does so, this Court has time and again held

1:00.3

that plaintiffs plead improve liability, and defendants plead improve exceptions to liability.

1:08.0

Second, precedent. And Keystone consolidated and Harris' trust, this Court made clear

1:13.3

that the prohibited transaction provisions provide for categorical rules. What the Second

1:19.1

Circuit's approach does is it converts those categorical rules into qualified ones, and that brings

1:23.8

me to the final reason for reversal, which is that they're not just qualified

1:29.4

prohibitions, but they're qualified based on exemptions that involve information that plaintiffs

1:34.1

cannot know and do not know prior to discovery. Information like who the counterparties are in a cross-trade

1:40.6

or how large a block trade is or what asset classes are in a block trade,

1:46.2

which is exactly why when Congress wrote these provisions, it intended for petitioners to

1:51.8

plead and prove under Section 1106 and for defendants to plead improve under Section 1108.

1:57.7

For these reasons, Your Honor, we ask this Court to reverse the judgment of the Second

...

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