Duane Morris ERISA Class Action Review – 2024

standing. In so doing, it relied on Angell, et al. v. Geico Advantage Insurance Co. , 67 F.4th 727, 734-35 (5th Cir. 2023), a class action concerning an insurance company ’ s alleged failure to compensate customers in accordance with its policies. Id. at 390. In Chavez , the plaintiffs filed a class action lawsuit against the defendants alleging that the defendants mismanaged funds, charged excessive fees, selected providers to maximize profits, controlled disbursements from the trusts for its own benefit, and procured unlawful compensation in violation of the ERISA. Chavez, at 375-76. The defendant argued the plaintiffs did not have standing because they “challenged fees that they were never subjected to, in plans that they never participated in, from employers for whom they never worked.” Id. at 378. Citing the Sixth Circuit ’ s decision in Fallick, et al. v. Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. , 162 F.3d 410, 424 (6th Cir. 1998), which held that a plaintiff ’ s only burden at the class certification stage is “assuring the court of their own standing,” the Fifth Circuit rejected the plaintiffs’ standing argument. Id. at 377-79. In affirming the certification of the class, the Fifth Circuit first discussed the two different approaches to address the issue of standing. Id. at 380-81. The Fifth Circuit found that the plaintiffs had standing under both approaches because the named plaintiffs’ injuries were “sufficiently analogous” to those of the class members. Id. at 384. The Fifth Circuit then analyzed class certification pursuant to Rule 23. The Fifth Circuit ruled that the district court did not err in granting class certification pursuant to Rule 23(b)(1) or (b)(3) because the common issues of whether the defendants mismanaged the plan and breached their fiduciary duties under the ERISA predominated over individualized issues. Accordingly, the Fifth Circuit affirmed the district court ’ s ruling. 9. Rulings Granting Class Certification Over Challenges Of Class Member Differentiation Due To Voluntary Waiver In several cases in 2023, courts granted class certification despite the fact that some of the class members had signed agreements not to bring suit against the defendant or not to bring suit under the ERISA. In so doing, courts variously reasoned that class members could not waive their statutory rights to sue on behalf of the plan and found other bases for concluding that such waivers were inapplicable or unenforceable. In McAlister, et al. v. Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. , 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 158560 (S.D.N.Y. Sep. 7, 2023), for example, the court affirmed the Magistrate Judge ’ s recommendation for certification of the class. The plaintiffs claimed that the defendants’ retirement plan ’ s joint and survivor plan benefits were under calculated based on old mortality tables and therefore were not actuarially equivalent benefits to those provided by the single life annuity option. The defendants argued that some of the class members had released claims upon separation of employment and thus class certification should be defeated by Rule 23(a) because the inclusion of the plaintiffs who had signed releases defeated typicality because the determination of the validity of the releases would be fact-specific and each release was executed at a different time and contained different terms. The court disagreed. In agreeing with the Magistrate Judge ’ s finding that all of the releases were the same and included the “virtually identical language” carving out any benefits of rights that vested prior to the execution of the releases under employee benefit plans that may render them inapplicable. Id. at 23-24. Therefore, the court determined that the class could be certified under Rule 23(a). Furthermore, the court reasoned that individual actions brought by each member of the class could result in different conclusions about how the class members’ benefits should be calculated, and therefore certification also was appropriate under Rule 23(b)(1)(A). in Mattson, et al. v. Milliman, Inc ., 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 180961 (W.D. Wash. Oct. 6, 2023), the court certified a class over the defendants’ position that a waiver of claims prevented some class members from bringing suit. The plaintiff filed a class action against the defendants alleging breach of fiduciary duties concerning the defendants’ Profit Sharing and Retirement Plan (the Plan) in violation of the ERISA. Specifically, the plaintiff asserted that the defendants failed to properly monitor the Plan and remove three underperforming target risk funds from the Plan. The plaintiff filed a motion for class certification of a class composed of participants and beneficiaries of the Plan who invested in the underperforming funds during a specified period. The court granted the motion. The defendants argued because the plaintiff was not a party to the defendants’ Dispute Resolution Agreement (DRA) and some class members were, the plaintiff failed to meet the typicality and adequacy requirements of Rule 23(a) insofar as the DRA covered the

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