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A New York district court recently summarily dismissed, with prejudice, a 401(k) plan participant’s putative class action complaint alleging breaches of fiduciary duty.  Falberg v. Goldman Sachs Grp., Inc., No. 19-cv-9910, 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 167064 (S.D.N.Y. Sep. 14, 2022).  The Plaintiff alleged that the Plan fiduciary-Defendants breached their duties of prudence and loyalty…

Plaintiffs must plead a “sound basis for comparison—a meaningful benchmark” — to sustain their claims of imprudent investment and excessive fee against a 401(k) plan, the federal appeals court in St. Louis has held, dismissing a class action lawsuit for breached of fiduciary duties under ERISA. Matousek v. MidAmerican Energy Co., No. 21-2749 (8th…

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit recently affirmed a District Court’s finding that Principal Life Insurance Company (“Principal”) did not breach its fiduciary duties regarding its stable value contract for 401(k) plans.  Rozo v. Principal Life Ins. Co., No. 21-2026, 2022 U.S. App. LEXIS 24803 (8th Cir. Sept. 2, 2022).

In…

Since the Supreme Court’s January ruling in Hughes v. Northwestern University, circuit courts throughout the country have issued varying rulings regarding 401(k) fee litigation cases. These include the Ninth Circuit in Trader Joe’s Co. and Salesforce.com, Inc., and the Sixth Circuit in CommonSpirit Health, Inc. and TriHealth, Inc.  Most recently, the Seventh Circuit…

On June 21, 2022, CommonSpirit Health defeated a putative class action brought by former employees who alleged that the company mismanaged their 401(k) plan by offering higher-cost, actively managed investment options when lower-cost index funds with better returns were available. The plaintiffs also alleged that the plan’s recordkeeping and investment management fees were excessive when…

A New York district court recently dismissed, without prejudice, a 401(k) plan participant’s putative class action complaint alleging breaches of fiduciary duty. The plaintiff alleged that the plan fiduciary-defendants breached their duties of prudence and loyalty by failing to properly monitor the plan’s costs. Cunningham v. USI Ins. Servs., LLC, 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS…

A Massachusetts district court recently ordered defendants in an ERISA fiduciary breach case to produce certain communications with their in-house and outside counsel, rejecting defendants’ argument that the communications occurred in the context of attorneys advising a 401(k) plan’s sponsor and fiduciaries as to their potential fiduciary liability. In re GE ERISA Litig., 2022…

In an order issued on October 15, 2021, United States District Judge Thomas W. Thrash from the Northern District of Georgia granted an employer’s Motion for Summary Judgment and ruled that plaintiff’s separation agreement with a release and covenant not to sue precluded him from bringing an ERISA class action for breach of fiduciary duties…

On October 12, 2021, Aon Hewitt Investment Consulting, Inc. (“Aon”) defeated a class action in the Western District of North Carolina brought by nearly 250,000 current and former Lowe’s Companies, Inc. (“Lowe’s”) employees who were participants in Lowe’s 401(k) retirement plan (the “Plan”). Plaintiffs alleged that Aon and Lowe’s breached their fiduciary duties of loyalty…

Can a former employee serve as a class representative for ERISA claims when she has signed a general release agreement and has waived her right to participate in class actions? According to a recent decision by the District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma, the answer may very well be “no.”

That court dealt…