Not long before she was fired last year, Shirley Edwards complained to her bosses that the company was mishandling its employee benefit plans. The human resources director for A.H. Cornell and Son Inc. accused the family-owned Jamison, Pa., construction company of violating the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA).
She alleged that the company was misrepresenting the cost of group health coverage to some employees in an effort to dissuade them from opting into benefits, and enrolling noncitizens in its ERISA plans by providing false Social Security numbers and other fraudulent information to insurance carriers.
