On August 25, 2016, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in Allen v. GreatBanc Trust Co., No. 15-3569, 2016 WL 4474730 (7th Cir. 2016), held that (1) the defendant in an ERISA case, rather than the plaintiff,...more
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit's Aug. 25, 2016, decision in Allen v. GreatBanc Trust Co., No. 15-3569, made it the first court in a published opinion to expressly reject Fifth Third Bancorp v....more
In the wake of Fifth Third v. Dudenhoeffer, a complaint that seeks to hold an ERISA fiduciary liable for failing to divest a plan of employer stock based solely upon publicly available information fails to state a plausible...more
Did the future course of “stock-drop” litigation under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) against fiduciaries of public company employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) take a sharp turn on June 25, 2014, when...more
The Supreme Court, in Fifth Third Bancorp v. John Dudenhoeffer (Dudenhoeffer), recently established new standards for determining when fiduciaries of Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) act prudently regarding a company’s...more
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case of Fifth Third Bancorp v. Dudenhoeffer, in which the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, in response to a motion to dismiss, declined to adopt a presumption of prudence in favor of a...more
The Supreme Court recently agreed to resolve a circuit split on the pleading requirements for claims that ERISA fiduciaries imprudently invested employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) assets in the stock of the...more