Making a "Trading Places" Bet on ERISA's Firestone Analysis

Here's a connection between ERISA and pop culture uncovered by someone else.  "Did the Supreme Court Flunk Constitutional Law When It Permitted Discretionary Review of Insured ERISA Benefits Cases" by Feigenbaum and Riemer, from the Summer 2013 issue of Committee News for the Health & Disability and Life Insurance Committees of the ABA, contains the following introductory passage:

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In the 1983 comedy Trading Places the amoral Duke brothers conduct an experiment in social Darwinism debating whether genetics or nurturing is the source of success. They make a wager, and then put their theories to the test. They manipulate the life of Louis Winthorp III (Dan Akroyd), a successful commodities trader, by “trading places” with Billy Ray Valentine (Eddie Murphy), a street con artist. We’ll bet the same amount wagered by the Duke brothers with our readers – identify any litigation in the federal courts between private litigants, other than discussed in this paper, where the Article III Judge must defer to the decision of the defendant without conducting a full trial on the merits. We bet you can’t.
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Ha!  Great movie.  Great connection!

For the record, I don't agree with the thesis of the article, and rather believe that the combination of the right to contract, the voluntariness of the US benefits system, the prism of Firestone's trust-law analysis, concerns about runaway plan-related costs,* and ERISA's comprehensive disclosure rules tends in the aggregate to validate the Firestone/MetLife/Conkright approach.

But whatever my view of the substance, the article is still a thoughtfully considered, incredibly well-researched and pretty all-around awesome article (in the interests of full disclosure,** one of the authors is a friend), and, moreover, it connects Eddie Murphy to ERISA so it's an automatic winner in the xtremErisa world.

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*  See, e.g., the Kennedy case.

**  . . . albeit not disclosure required by ERISA . . .