The US Supreme Court [official website] ruled [opinion, PDF] unanimously Monday in Tibble v. Edison International [SCOTUSblog materials] that the timeliness of an Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) [DOL backgrounder] fiduciary duty claim over investments does not necessarily run from initial selection of investments. The fiduciaries in this case offered higher-cost retail class mutual funds to plan participants, even though identical lower-cost institution class funds were available. Plan participants from Edison International selected the retail mutual funds as plan elections more than six years before the claim was filed, which is beyond the reach of ERISA’s statute of limitations. In an opinion by Justice Stephen Breyer, the court concluded that the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit “erred by applying a statutory bar to a claim of a ‘breach or violation’ of a fiduciary duty without considering the nature of the fiduciary duty.” The court remanded the case for further proceedings.

The court agreed in October to hear the case [JURIST report]. Oral arguments [JURIST report] were held in February.