Under the paradigm created by the Supreme Court’s ruling in a case known as Fifth-Third v. Dudenhoeffer, plaintiffs continue to have difficulty proving standing in ERISA stock drop cases.
A court used plain language of the ESOP plan document to show the plan administrator's failure to implement participants diversification elections was "arbitrary and capricious."
As with the lawsuit filed in July, the new complaint says the defendants breached their ERISA fiduciary by retaining the company stock fund as an investment option under its retirement savings plans when a reasonable fiduciary would have done otherwise.
A court shot down several actions plaintiffs suggested Target could have taken when it knew or should have known its stock price was artificially inflated.
The latest decision in RJR
vs. Tatum comes out of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals,
which has previously made multiple rulings on the long-running and procedurally
complicated dispute.
A federal court held that First Bankers breached its fiduciary duties to the plan’s participants by failing to conduct a prudent investigation into the fair market value of the shares.
Among other things, the plaintiff alleges the plan committee ignored the numerous warning signs that Chesapeake was an imprudent investment for retirement assets, and allowed the plan to invest more than 44% of its assets in this one stock.
The bank’s recent troubles over illegal sales practices have
led retirement plan participants to file an ERISA stock drop suit, claiming
plan fiduciaries continued to offer Wells stock when they knew it was imprudent
to do so.