Securities Legal News Articles & Interviews

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.

Washington, DC Beginning on January 1, 2024, an expanded group of long-term part-time employees may be able to participate in their employer’s 401k ERISA retirement plan. It’s a small tweak in the 2019 Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement Act (SECURE Act) that could have major implications for young and underemployed workers who struggle to save for retirement. Many employers are still processing the changes, so it may ultimately fall to workers to ensure that they are afforded the opportunities provided by law. In most cases, a well-crafted inquiry (with the advice of competent counsel) may eliminate the need for an ERISA lawsuit.

Oakland, CA On December 13, Clorox Co. asked the Northern District of California to dismiss a class action ERISA breach of fiduciary duty lawsuit that targets the company’s longstanding practice of using forfeited employer contributions to participants’ accounts to reduce its required contributions to the plan. Plan participants argue that forfeited amounts should instead be used to defray the plan’s administrative expenses.

New York, NY On November 20 MetLife Group and a group of participants in the MetLife 401(k) Plan agreed to settle an ERISA breach of fiduciary duty lawsuit for $4.5 million. In their amended class-action complaint, plan participants accused plan fiduciaries of failing to act solely in the interest of plan participants and beneficiaries by including proprietary investment options in the plan when similar, cheaper and better-performing investments were available in the marketplace.