What percentage of the fiduciary-breach lawsuits are settled?

[Peter Gulia]

For the fiduciary-breach lawsuits that been in the news for the past 15½ years, has anyone done a scorecard on how many, or what percentage, were:

completely dismissed?

won by the plaintiffs?

won by the defendants?

settled?

[CuseFan]

It's interesting that you are the person asking about this Peter. Of all the people on this forum, you would be the one I expected to most likely have assembled those statistics. It would be interesting to get everyone's honest (no Googling) guesses to see perception versus actuality (but then someone has to do the legwork/research, which is probably more than a Google otherwise Peter wouldn't be asking).

My guesses: dismissed 20%, plaintiffs 10%, defendants 10%, settled 60%

[MoJo]

I'd go with dismissed 5% (and stay dismissed), settled 93% (including those that settled post judgement/appeal), and resolved via judgment (that sticks) 2% (and I'm overstating this probably).

[Lois Baker]

Interesting question -- would be a great resource for our readers.

We haven't run across anything definitive in years -- Groom Law Group used to publish a summary periodically, but the most recent I can find is 2012:

https://www.groom.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/1177_401k_Fee_Cases_Chart_9_25_12.pdf

 

[Peter Gulia]

After the Schlicter fiduciary-breach lawsuits began in December 2006, for a while I kept my own internal records. But the increases in complaints overwhelmed the time I could devote to keeping score. Now that the cases number over a thousand (with about 100 to 200 new cases in each of recent years), it would be a big lift to develop a scorecard.

I read the officially and commercially published court decisions. I selectively read some complaints, and some settlement agreements. I continually update my written advice on how to be less attractive as a target.

Not counting employer-securities cases, I remember only three ERISA fiduciary-breach actions with a trial—ABB, Kraft Foods II, and Edison. (But which did I not remember?}

ABB commenced on December 29, 2006; went to trial over five years later in 2012; endured several more rounds, including two appeals trips; and settled in 2019 (after 12¼ years’ litigation).

[Dave Baker]

This is such a great thread. I'm so delighted that this kind of thinking and discussion can take place on these message boards. Such important stuff.