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Doug Heffernan is a partner in the Minneapolis office. He practices exclusively in the law of employee benefits and executive compensation. Doug joined the firm in 1982.
In his practice Doug mainly represents employers, although he also works with providers of financial products and services. Doug's practice includes the full range of legal services an employer traditionally expects from employee benefits counsel, including matters related to:
Qualified defined benefit pension plans (including "cash balance" plans)
Profit sharing and stock bonus plans (including 401(k) plans), and money purchase pension plans
Nonqualified deferred compensation plans
Health, disability, and life insurance plans
Doug also has expertise in certain areas that are not as common among employee benefits lawyers:
Collective bargaining and special employee benefit rules applicable to multiemployer pension plans. Doug has worked for many years with the Twin Cities hospitals in connection with the various multiemployer pension plans for nurses and other hospital workers, including the Twin City Hospitals - Minnesota Nurses Association Pension Plan. This experience includes both collective bargaining negotiations regarding pension matters and on-going administration matters for the multiemployer pension plans.
Special employee benefits rules applicable to tax-exempt, church, and governmental employers. This includes experience with qualified 401(a) church and governmental plans, 403(b) tax sheltered annuities and 403(b)(7) custodial accounts, and 457 deferred compensation issues. Doug used his expertise in those areas to assist the University of Minnesota, the University of Michigan, and Capital University (Ohio) in redesigning their faculty retirement plans after the Tax Reform Act of 1986. Doug also currently advises a number of other colleges on retirement plan matters.
Issues regarding ERISA litigation, fiduciary duties, and prohibited transactions. This experience includes both counseling clients to resolve the problem as well as working with our litigation lawyers in court proceedings.
Employee benefit issues arising in connection with corporate sales or acquisitions, or other corporate organization changes. This includes analyzing "affiliated service group" and "leased employee" issues arising from joint ventures.
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