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Recently, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin granted a Motion to Dismiss, dismissing ERISA breach of fiduciary duty claims, failure to monitor claims, and prohibited transaction claims in a putative class action involving Oshkosh Corporation’s 401(k) Plan. The plaintiff supported those claims with allegations of excessive recordkeeping fees, excessive share…

Recently,  the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania granted a Motion to Dismiss, dismissing ERISA breach of fiduciary duty claims based on excessive recordkeeping fee allegations. The district court addressed the level of detail plaintiffs must provide to move an ERISA breach of fiduciary duty recordkeeping fee allegation from possible to…

American Airlines, Inc. and its affiliated credit union recently defeated an appeal challenging a low-yield investment option in the airline’s 401(k) plan when the Fifth Circuit ruled that the plan participants lacked Article III standing to bring their ERISA claims.

In 2016, the plaintiffs filed suit on behalf of a putative class of nearly 20,000…

On July 16, 2021, the District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin dismissed without prejudice four ERISA claims brought by a former employee alleging mismanagement of Infinity’s defined-contribution 401(k) plan. Plaintiff’s two Fair Labor Standards Act claims were not at issue and remain pending.

Plaintiff alleged that plan fiduciaries violated their fiduciary duties by…

The District Court for the Southern District of Iowa recently dismissed an ERISA putative class action lawsuit challenging 401(k) performance and fees after plan participants failed to identify appropriate benchmarks in their complaint.

The court reinforced the Eighth Circuit’s standards for stating such claims, requiring that the plaintiffs allege facts establishing “a meaningful benchmark for…

On appeal following a bench trial of claims brought by a class of participants and beneficiaries of a 401(k) plan, the Tenth Circuit affirmed the decision of the District of Colorado calculating damages and prejudgment interest, denying injunctive relief, and finding the employer did not engage in a “prohibited transaction” under ERISA Section 406, 29…

The Third Circuit will review a Pennsylvania district court’s decision to certify a 60,000+ person class in an ERISA fiduciary breach lawsuit claiming mismanagement of a defined contribution plan’s investments and recordkeeping fees. This appeal queues up guidance on a hotly litigated issue in recent ERISA cases:  can defined contribution plan participants challenge the prudence…

Recently, in Davis v. Salesforce.com, a California district court dismissed for the second time claims alleging that the defendant 401(k) plan fiduciaries breached their ERISA fiduciary duties by retaining overpriced and underperforming investment options on the plan’s investment menu. Our previous post on that dismissal is available here.

That decision is one in…

The Northern District of California dismissed with prejudice a lawsuit alleging a 401(k) plan’s sponsor and fiduciaries included unreasonably expensive funds in the plan’s investment lineup.  The court previously dismissed the plaintiffs’ claims without prejudice, finding their complaint failed to plead facts from which the court could infer the defendants breached their fiduciary duties.  In…

The Ninth Circuit recently affirmed the dismissal of an ERISA employer-stock drop putative class action, holding that the plaintiff’s failure to identify specific, viable alternative actions that plan fiduciaries should have taken instead of the challenged actions was fatal to her claim. In so holding, the Ninth Circuit joined the Second, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth…