Cite as: 517 U. S. 882 (1996)
Syllabus
(a) Unless a plaintiff shows that a fiduciary caused the plan to engage in the allegedly unlawful transaction, there can be no § 406(a)(1) violation warranting relief. Cf. Peacock v. Thomas, 516 U. S. 349, 353. Thus, the Court of Appeals erred by not asking whether fiduciary status existed in this case before finding a § 406(a)(1)(D) violation. Pp. 888-889. (b) Lockheed and the board of directors, as plan sponsors, were not acting as fiduciaries when they amended the Plan. Given ERISA's definition of fiduciary and the applicability of the duties attending that status, the rule that this Court announced with respect to the amendment of welfare benefit plans in Curtiss-Wright Corp. v. Schoonejongen, 514 U. S. 73, applies equally to the amendment of pension plans. Thus, when employers or other plan sponsors adopt, modify, or terminate pension plans, they do not act as fiduciaries, id., at 78, but are analogous to settlors of a trust. Pp. 889-891. (c) It is not necessary to decide whether the Retirement Committee members acted as fiduciaries, because their payment of benefits pursuant to the terms of an otherwise lawful plan was not a "transaction" prohibited by § 406(a)(1)(D). That section does not in direct terms include an employer's payment of benefits. And the "transactions" prohibited by other provisions of § 406(a) generally involve uses of plan assets that are potentially harmful to the plan. The payment of benefits conditioned on performance by plan participants cannot reasonably be said to share that characteristic. Pp. 892-895. 2. OBRA §§ 9201 and 9202(a) do not apply retroactively to require Lockheed to use pre-1988 service years in calculating Spink's benefits. Congress expressly provided, in OBRA § 9204(a)(1), that the amendments to ERISA and the ADEA would be effective with respect to plan years beginning on or after January 1, 1988. Since the amendments' temporal effect is manifest on the statute's face, "there is no need to resort to judicial default rules," Landgraf v. USI Film Products, 511 U. S. 244, 280, and inquiry is at an end. Pp. 896-897. 60 F. 3d 616, reversed and remanded.
Thomas, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Rehnquist, C. J., and Stevens, O'Connor, Scalia, Kennedy, and Ginsburg, JJ., joined, and in which Souter and Breyer, JJ., joined as to all but Part III-B. Breyer, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, in which Souter, J., joined, post, p. 898.
Gordon E. Kirscher argued the cause for petitioners. With him on the briefs were David E. Gordon, Kenneth E. Johnson, Kenneth S. Geller, and Ralph A. Hurvitz.
883
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