benefit, in the amount of $10,000.00[,] plus $138.08 interest” by check shortly after she decided to close her SecureLine Account). Moreover, Edmonson has adduced no evidence that, if she had been paid in a lump sum rather than through a retained asset account, she would have invested her death benefit and generated the same profit or “spread” that she now seeks to reclaim from Lincoln. She has merely hypothesized a greater benefit, had Lincoln administered the plan in a different way than it did. That ought not be enough. See Kendall v. Emps. Ret. Plan of Avon Prods., 561 F.3d 112, 119 (2d Cir.2009) (finding that an ERISA plan participant’s lost opportunity to receive higher benefits did not constitute an injury-in-fact); Drutis v. Rand McNally & Co., 499 F.3d 608, 611 (6th Cir.2007) (<HOLDING>). Thus, although Edmonson may have attempted to
holding that unlike the social security disability program erisa does not require plan administrators to give special deference to the opinions of treating physicians and noting that there are critical differences between the two programs that nothing in erisa requires employers to establish employee benefit plans and that erisa does not mandate what kind of benefits employers must provide if they choose to have such a plan quotations omitted holding that erisa authorizes former employees to sue for unpaid benefits whether under the plan as it is or as it should be once reformed holding that the plaintiffs causes of action were preempted because their claims were premised on the existence of an erisa plan holding that plaintiffs who claimed damage based on what they would have received if their employers plan were reformed to meet the requirements of erisa failed to allege an injuryinfaet holding that erisa preemption does not apply where the plan itself would not be liable even though a successful plaintiffs damages would be measured in part by the lost pension benefits the plaintiff would have received had he been a participant in the plan