In the case of Sally L. Conkright, et al. v. Paul J. Frommert et al., 2009, the U.S Supreme Court was asked to decide on a dispute regarding pension benefits under an Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) plan administered by Xerox Corporation for its employees. The issue arose when certain employees who had left the company and then returned were not satisfied with how their pensions were calculated upon retirement - they argued that it unfairly accounted for their previous distributions from the fund when they initially left Xerox's employment. The court ruled in favor of Conkright (representing Xerox), stating that courts should defer to plan administrators' interpretations unless those interpretations are clearly unreasonable or contrary to ERISA regulations. This decision reinforced principles established in earlier cases about judicial deference towards administrative decisions made by benefit plans’ fiduciaries under ERISA.

In the dissenting opinion for Sally L. Conkright, et al. v. Paul J. Frommert et al., Justice Breyer argued that the majority's decision to grant deference to a plan administrator’s interpretation of an ambiguous pension plan provision was incorrect and unfair to employees who had been misled about their benefits by the same administrators in previous years. He believed that this ruling would allow employers or administrators with conflicts of interest to make self-serving interpretations of ambiguities in plans they themselves have drafted, which could potentially harm employees' rights and interests under ERISA (Employee Retirement Income Security Act). Furthermore, he emphasized that courts should not blindly trust such conflicted parties but instead independently interpret ambiguous terms based on ordinary principles of contract law.