ERISA

Workers across America today depend on their company sponsored retirement plans to provide them with income after their retirement. To be able to achieve financial security after they retire, these workers' retirement plan investments must perform well over the course of their working years. How the employers of these workers choose retirement plan investment options plays a critical role in the retirement income of all their employees.

Under the law of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), an employer who breaches the trust of its employees, who engages in self-interest instead of the interest of its workers, may be liable under the laws of ERISA for breach of fiduciary duty. These employers are supposed to act prudently, loyally, and with the highest regard for the interests of employees when it comes to selecting plan investment options and investing plan assets. . When employers fall short on their ERISA fiduciary duties, employees can seek to hold their employers accountable for plan losses caused by the employers' breach.

ERISA's fiduciary duties apply to all plan investment options. In recent years, however, company stock as a plan investment option has been closely scrutinized. With alarming frequency, employers have elected to invest millions, and in many cases, hundreds of millions of dollars of plan assets in their own company stock while at the same time engaging in highly risky and illegal business and accounting practices. These practices cause company stock to be an imprudent and highly inappropriate plan investment option, and often result in enormous plan losses. Keller Rohrback is a national leader in pursuing ERISA breach of fiduciary duty claims against employers for losses to plans caused by imprudent investment in company stock.

Representative Cases: In re Enron ERISA Litigation, In re WorldCom ERISA Litigation, In re Global Crossing ERISA Litigation, In re Lucent ERISA Litigation, In re Williams ERISA Litigation, In re Providian ERISA Litigation.

For more information on our ERISA practice, please see www.ERISAfraud.com.