Pamela H. Nissen

Pamela H. Nissen is a shareholder in Reinhart’s Employee Benefits Practice and Multiemployer Plan (Taft-Hartley) Team. For 28 years, Pam has worked extensively with jointly-trusteed benefit plans in a broad spectrum of matters and issues. She has served as plan counsel to pension, health and welfare, vacation, apprenticeship training and industry promotion plans. She focuses on providing high-quality, practical legal representation in a timely and cost-effective manner.

Employee Benefits and ERISA

Pam works with trustees and serves as plan counsel representing plans in matters related to:

• Benefit plan administration
• Representing fiduciaries
• Claim appeals
• Compliance
• Plan drafting
• Trust Agreements
• Qualified Domestic Relations Orders
• Participant communications
• Service provider agreements
• Investment manager agreements
• Subrogation
• Department of Labor audits
• Collection of employer contributions
• Apprenticeship Standards
• Student Handbooks and Policies
• Employment Policies

She has developed a number of special participant communication materials for topics ranging from disqualifying employment to claim appeal brochures. Pam also counsels apprenticeship training funds boards in their unique roles, navigating compliance requirements from the state and federal apprenticeship authorities as well as ERISA fiduciary duties. Pam has been instrumental in developing policies for employee benefit plans relating to withdrawal liability and auditing and collection procedures.

She has developed a niche practice area in ERISA in her role as plan counsel relating to the collection of employer contributions and related damages, having worked on more than 1,100 cases and in conjunction with plan administrators, collecting more than $23 million in damages for employee benefit plans throughout her career. Pam has worked on numerous cases involving corporate fraud investigations and has worked with forensic accountants to uncover millions of dollars of corporate fraud.

Pam is efficient, organized and thorough in her approach to Fund Counsel work as well as litigation, and is adept at sorting through the issues presented to her clients and formulating arguments from the facts of the case. She utilizes appropriate resources to provide high-quality representation in a timely and cost-effective manner for her clients.

Examples of representative matters Pam has handled include:

• Representation in an Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals case that established alter ego liability for a non-signatory employer.
• Representation in a federal court case regarding definition of plan terms and fiduciary obligations.
• Representation in a federal court case that defined the scope of a contributing employer’s obligations with respect to maintaining records and corresponding liability for its failure to do so.
• Representation in a federal court case defining liability for corporate officers.
• Representation of apprenticeship training programs for EEOC cases and related litigation.