In March 2009, the entire United States was in a furor over the fact that the beleaguered insurance giant AIG, which had just received hundreds of millions of dollars in bailout money from the U.S. government, had paid out $165 million in performance and retention bonuses to key executives.

If you were attorney general of the United States, how would you have advised President Obama with regard to recovering these funds? Are the employee benefits covered by ERISA? Did the CEO of AIG have a fiduciary duty with regard to these funds under ERISA to the employees who claimed they were entitled to the bonuses? Did the CEO have a fiduciary duty to the U.S., which owned 79 percent of AIG at that time?