The press release headlines are sobering: "U.S. Labor Department files suit to remove trustees," "Department of Labor files suit to recover unpaid contributions to 401(k) plan," and "Judge orders trustees to restore losses."

The Department of Labor website is overflowing with cases of regulators taking action against employers accused of mishandling employee benefit plans.

Among the most common cases: errors in administering 401(k) plans. Although Labor Department officials and experts in the ERISA field say the majority of cases are errors in reporting and do not result in civil lawsuits, the numbers of benefit plan cases investigated (of all kinds) are still impressive: the DOL closed 3,677 investigations in 2013, with nearly 73 percent of those resulting in monetary fines or other corrective action. Lawsuits were filed in 111 of those cases.