29 U.S.C. § 1131
Section 1131 · Criminal penalties
This is § 501 of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974
Amended 3 times on record
Applied in 57 court decisions — leading case Pilot Life Insurance v. Dedeaux (1987)
Most recently applied in Hoak v. Plan Adm'r of the Plans of NCR Corp. (March 2019)
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year.Markers show enactment, consequential amendments, and circuit splits over this section — watch for a citation surge after a change or a disagreement. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
(a) Any person who willfully violates any provision of part 1 of this subtitle, or any regulation or order issued under any such provision, shall upon conviction be fined not more than $100,000 or imprisoned not more than 10 years, or both; except that in the case of such violation by a person not an individual, the fine imposed upon such person shall be a fine not exceeding $500,000.
(b) Any person that violates section 1149 of this title shall upon conviction be imprisoned not more than 10 years or fined under title 18, or both.
Editorial notes U.S. Code · Office of the Law Revision Counsel
Amendments
2010—Pub. L. 111–148 designated existing provisions as subsec. (a) and added subsec. (b).
2002—Pub. L. 107–204 substituted “$100,000” for “$5,000”, “10 years” for “one year”, and “$500,000” for “$100,000”.
Regulations
Secretary authorized, effective Sept. 2, 1974, to promulgate regulations wherever provisions of this subchapter call for the promulgation of regulations, see section 1031 of this title.