Sotomayor unlikely to surprise on pension rulings

Sonia Sotomayor, the U.S. Supreme Court's first Hispanic justice, isn't expected to shatter precedent with her rulings on high-court pension cases, according to ERISA attorneys. The Senate confirmed her appointment last Thursday by a 68-31 vote. In her almost 11 years as a judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Southern District of New York, Ms. Sotomayor was involved in about 20 cases related to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act. In none did she display a bias toward plan participants or plan sponsors, sources said, and her record suggests that she will continue down the ERISA mainstream that was followed by former Associate Justice David Souter, whom she is succeeding. “Right now, there's no reason to predict anything different,” said Bob Eccles, an ERISA litigation attorney for the Los Angeles-based law firm O'Melveny & Myers LLP. Lawyers also said that the handful of ERISA decisions that Ms. Sotomayor wrote for the federal appeals court were routine but demonstrate her intelligence and diligence. “They were pretty much run-of-the-mill. She basically applies existing precedent,” said Michael Vanic, an ERISA litigation attorney with the law firm Reish & Reicher of Los Angeles. “I didn't see anything out of the ordinary one way or another,” he said.