Benefits Committee, Western & Southern Fin. For this reason, she argued, the denial of her claim should be reviewed under the de novo standard of review (which allows the court to conduct an independent analysis of the plan’s denial of claims with scrutiny), rather than the arbitrary and capricious standard (which allows the plan’s decision to be overturned only if it was clearly in error). The court also upheld the trial court’s decision to impose penalties on the plan administrator for failure to timely provide requested documents to the participant, rejecting arguments that the participant had not suffered prejudice and that the delay was “inadvertent