Compliance June 24, 2007
IMHO: Fighting Words
“[T]he complaint is a rambling 38 page collection long on legal argument, public policy rhetoric and repetition, but vague in its allegations of facts which might be relevant to the claims alleged.″
Reported by Nevin E. Adams
With all the tact of a law professor dressing down a first-year student, U.S. District Judge John Shabaz of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin last week dismissed one of the so-called 401(k) revenue-sharing lawsuits brought by the St. Louis-based law firm of Schlichter, Bogard & Denton – and did so in just 18 pages. And he did so “with prejudice and costs” (see Deere and Fidelity Fee Lawsuit Thrown Out).
It was the second such case to be dismissed. In an even more succinct dismissal in February (two-pages), U.S. District Judge John Darrah said that the 401(k) participants in the Exelon Corp. plan failed to make a “link between the administrative fees they were charged and their market-based losses” (see Court Tosses 401(k) Participants’ Request for Investment Losses Relief).
Not that there weren’t elements of plan structure that might raise eyebrows in some quarters in the most recent case—the agreement between the plan sponsor (Deere & Co.) and the provider (Fidelity) to limit the fund menu to funds managed by Fidelity, for one thing (23 of the 26 funds on the menu were Fidelity’s). And then there is the judge’s matter of fact assertion that “Defendant Deere could have negotiated lower fees with Fidelity Research, or could have selected different funds from different providers with lower rates but has made no effort to do so.’ One could readily imagine those exact words being uttered as a stark condemnation of a fiduciary that had failed to live up to its duty—but this court recounted it as a statement of fact, nothing more (and, for the record, there’s no fiduciary bar to doing what Deere did, so long as their motivations were solely in the best interests of plan participants/beneficiaries, and the fees and services so obtained were reasonable). Besides, the plan did offer access to a brokerage window. If participants wanted something beyond a Fidelity offering, they could tap into some 2,500 other alternatives.
Furthermore, IMHO, Judge Shabaz was too willing to conclude that, since Deere participants were paying the same for their mutual investments as other investors, the fees must be reasonable. On the surface, the fees weren’t obscene—fees ranged from .07% for the Spartan Fund to 1.01% for the Diversified International Fund, according to the ruling. Still, it’s one thing to conclude that those fees were reasonable; quite another, IMHO, to assume that they are reasonable simply because others (and retail investors, to boot) are willing to pay them.
“Nothing” Doing
Still, Shabaz was clear in refuting the notion that the plan had any obligation to delve into the specifics of any revenue-sharing arrangement (“recent proposals to amend the regulations…to require revenue-sharing disclosures in annual reports make it apparent that present regulations do not require it’), and clearer still in rebuffing the notion that there was an obligation to share those details with plan participants (“Nothing in the statute or regulation directly requires such a disclosure’). Additionally, Shabaz concluded that the fee disclosures included in the Summary Plan Descriptions (SPDs) and prospectuses were sufficient for participants to make informed investment decisions—or at least that requiring more would “require judicial expansion of the detailed disclosure regime crafted by Congress and the Department of Labor pursuant to its statutory authority.’
While he acknowledged that some of the issues raised were undergoing reconsideration (1), when all was said and done, he found no merit in the claims, concluding in effect that it appeared “beyond a reasonable doubt that the plaintiffs can prove no set of facts in support of the claim which would entitle the plaintiffs to relief.’
One should be cautious in drawing too many conclusions from this result, of course. In the same way that lawsuits contain only one side of the situation, dismissals all too often shuttle aside potentially triable issues, not because the issues aren’t there, but because plaintiff’s counsel didn’t make an effective presentation. Still, on the issue of revenue-sharing disclosures, I think Shabaz got it right.
When the cases were first filed I, perhaps like many of you, was no doubt surprised that these kinds of allegations were applied to some of the largest 401(k) plans in the nation—plans that, by any reasonable assessment, probably had the staff and plan-size “clout’ to get such matters “right.’ Of course, they also had the size that makes for “deep pockets’ and public brand(s) that typically eschew the kind of publicity that accompanies a lawsuit and facilitates a quiet settlement.
This time, however, it seems that they also have a willingness to fight back.
(1)“A review of the report confirms that the revenue sharing issue raised by plaintiffs’ complaint is a matter of policy concern within the Department of Labor. It also unequivocally confirms that present regulations do not require disclosure of the information.’