ERISA Violation Legal News Articles & Interviews

Grand Rapids, MI On July 28, a three-judge panel for the Sixth Circuit heard arguments in Bradley Fleming v. Kellogg Co. a lawsuit that addresses, once again, the question of whether claims of fiduciary mismanagement against an ERISA plan can be forced into arbitration. It is significant that Fleming’s ERISA lawsuit advances claims against the Kellogg Company Savings and Investment Plan on behalf of the plan itself, as well as the plan’s individual participants. To date, the panel has not yet rendered a decision.

Memphis, TN On August 20, the Sixth Circuit refused to force participants in two related 401k plans, the "DRiV Plan" and the "Tenneco Plan,” to arbitrate claims that the plans wasted workers’ retirement money by offering sub-par investment choices. At first blush, Parker v. Tenneco, Inc., looks like one of many cookie-cutter ERISA lawsuits that allege sloppy financial management and the price that working folks pay.

Houston, TX On March 28, Judge George C. Hanks of the Southern District of Texas held that more than 7,000 North Slope Alaskan pipeline retirees who had participated in the BP America Retirement Plan (BP plan) were entitled to equitable relief under Section 502(a)(3) of ERISA. Guenther v. BP Retirement Accumulation Plan, a long-running ERISA lawsuit, alleges that BP "committed fraud or similarly inequitable conduct" in how it announced a pension formula change more than 30 years ago.

New Orleans, LA On July 9, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals heard a new challenge to a Department of Labor rule, which permits ERISA plan fiduciaries to consider environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors in their plan investment decisions.

San Diego, CA – On May 24, the Southern District of California denied Qualcomm Inc.’s motion to dismiss a class action 401k lawsuit brought by participants in the Qualcomm Incorporated Employee Savings and Retirement Plan. Perez-Cruet v. Qualcomm, Inc. alleges that Qualcomm violated the fiduciary duty and anti-inurement provisions of ERISA by using the forfeited money to reduce future employer matching contributions instead of eliminating the expenses that were charged to participant accounts.

New York, NY On May 31, U.S. District Court Judge Katherine Polk Failla denied Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America’s (TIAA) motion for summary judgment in a lawsuit that accused the insurance giant of aggressive and misleading sales tactics. TIAA’s “fear selling” strategy was crafted to persuade pension plan participants to move their accounts out of ERISA-protected plans into more expensive proprietary investment products marketed by TIAA.

San Francisco, CA On March 4, former Twitter executives Parag Agrawal, Ned Segal, Vijaya Gadde and Sean Edgett filed an ERISA lawsuit against Elon Musk and X Corp. (f/k/a/ Twitter) alleging that Musk and X Corp. had failed to pay severance benefits as required by the provisions of the law and the plan documents. The four argue that they are owed a combined $128 million in severance pay.

Baltimore, MD On February 1, 2022, the District Court of Maryland ordered Bicallis LLC and its owner, Bryan Hill to restore missing contributions to the Bicallis 401(k) Plan. Bicallis was a Baltimore-based logistics, engineering and management support services company with 25 employees. The contributions were owed to the pension plan under the law and the express terms of the plan.

Pittsburgh, PA On February 5, the Western District of Pennsylvania issued a Temporary Restraining Order barring RiversEdge Advanced Retirement Systems, LLC and Paul Palguta, the company’s sole owner and president, from accessing the assets of various ERISA retirement plans. The Department of Labor has accused the third-party administrator of misappropriating and misallocating retirement plan assets from seventeen retirement plans, fourteen of which were covered by ERISA. The defendants also are alleged to have transferred assets among the trust accounts for these plans and generated false records to conceal these transfers. The fraudulent information provided to the plans duped them into filing false reports with the DOL, which further frustrated discovery of the embezzlement.

San Francisco, CA In February 2022, the United States Supreme Court denied the petition for certiorari filed by the petitioner in Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association v. The California Secure Choice Retirement Savings Program (CalSavers). The denial kept in place a decision of the Ninth Circuit that permitted a California-sponsored and administered retirement plan for employees of small businesses.