Defined Benefits

A New York jury awarded 26,000 employees $38,760,232 in an ERISA fiduciary breach lawsuit over unreasonable recordkeeping and administrative fees from their retirement plan provider.

Senator Bill Cassidy, ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, has issued a white paper outlining proposals to provide retirement plans to independent workers.

The Labor Department’s rule that allows environmental, social and governance factors to be considered when choosing investments for retirement plans has been challenged since it took effect in 2023, but now the DOL has asked the appeals court to suspend proceedings.

Since the Court took a worker-friendly approach on behalf of the University’s 28,000 employees in this excessive fees suit, the final ruling could burden plan fiduciaries and open the floodgates of meritless litigation, say retirement industry groups ERIC and the Spark Institute.

The justices are now seeking input from the Department of Labor in this Home Depot case, after unanimously agreeing that the burden of proof lay with plan fiduciaries in the Cornell University excessive fee case last week.

The state attorney general and AARP have joined in on the lawsuits to attempt to recover pension funds for the 1,100 workers who saw their retirement plans wiped out.