 Mertens v. Hewitt Associates

Mertens v. Hewitt Associates, 508 U.S. 248 (1993), is the second in the trilogy of United States Supreme Court ERISA preemption cases that effectively denies any remedy for employees who are harmed by medical malpractice or other bad acts of their health plan if they receive their health care from their employer.According to John H. Langbein, Sterling Professor of Law and Legal History at Yale University the trouble got off to a bad start with Justice John Paul Stevens' dicta in "Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co. v. Russell", 473 U.S. 134 (1985) a case where the plaintiff was an employee who after getting her improperly denied disability income insurance benefits paid in full also sought money damages for physical and emotional injury for the delay of six months while the employer had denied payment.