252
Opinion of the Court
The common law additionally leads us to reject Salomon's complaint that our view of § 502(a)(3) would incongruously allow not only the harmed beneficiaries, but also the culpable fiduciary, to seek restitution from the arguably less culpable counterparty-transferee. The common law sees no incongruity in such a rule, see Restatement (Second) of Trusts, supra, § 294, at 69 ("[A]n action can be maintained against the transferee either by the beneficiary or the trustee"); 4 Law of Trusts § 294.2, at 101, and for good reason: "Although the trustee bases his cause of action upon his own voluntary act, and even though the act was knowingly done in breach of his duty to the beneficiary, he is permitted to maintain the action, since the purpose of the action is to recover money or other property for the trust estate, and whatever he recovers he will hold subject to the trust." Restatement (Second) of Trusts, supra, § 294, Comment c.
But Salomon advances a more fundamental critique of the common-law analogy, reasoning that the antecedent violation here—a violation of § 406(a)'s per se prohibitions on transacting with a party in interest—was unknown at common law, and that common-law liability should not attach to an act that does not violate a common-law duty. While Salomon accurately characterizes § 406(a) as expanding upon the common law's arm's-length standard of conduct, see Keystone Consol. Industries, 508 U. S., at 160, we reject Salomon's unsupported suggestion that remedial principles of the common law are tethered to the precise contours of common-law duty.
We note, however, that our interpretation of § 502(a)(3) to incorporate common-law remedial principles does not necessarily foreclose accommodation of Salomon's underlying concern that ERISA should not be construed to require counter-parties to transactions with a plan to monitor the plan for compliance with each of ERISA's intricate details. See, e. g., Prohibited Transaction Exemption 75-1, § II(e), 40 Fed. Reg. 50847 (1975) (requiring that the plan maintain certain
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