Damages

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A recent IRS information letter confirms that “waiting time penalties” paid under California law are not wages for federal income tax withholding purposes. Section 203 of the California State Labor Code imposes penalties on employers that fail to pay final wages to terminated employees within a specified period of time. These penalties are paid to…

Posted in IRS

The court in Tussey v. ABB Inc., No. 2:06-cv-04305 (W.D. Mo. Dec. 9, 2015), a long-running suit alleging that ABB failed to monitor recordkeeping fees and improperly mapped participants’ investments (previously reported on here), awarded class counsel $11.7 million in attorneys’ fees and affirmed its earlier award of $2.28 million in costs and…

Mapping in a 401(k) plan occurs when an investment option is removed and the participant’s investment in that option is transferred to a different investment option (absent direction from the participant).  On remand from the Eighth Circuit, the district court in Tussey v. ABB Inc., No. 2:06-cv-04305 (W.D. Mo. July 9, 2015), held that plan fiduciaries abused their discretion when they mapped participants’ investments from a balanced fund to the plan trustee’s managed allocation fund.  In so ruling, the court found that the trustee and plan sponsor had entered into an improper cross-subsidization agreement whereby the trustee was paid above-market rates for providing services to the plan in exchange for providing various administrative services to the plan sponsor at a loss.  As a result of this conflict,

The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled in Comcast Corp. v. Behrend, 2013 WL 1222646 (U.S. Mar. 27, 2013) that, in order to obtain class certification, plaintiffs carry the burden of establishing not only that they have proof of classwide liability, but also that their potential damages are tied to their theory of liability and capable of classwide proof. The Court’s ruling follows on the heels of its ruling in Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, 131 S. Ct. 2541 (2011), in which it suggested that the admissibility standard for expert evidence outlined in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (1993), should apply at the class certification stage. Instead of ruling on the Daubert issue, the Court provided what could prove to be an even more effective means for defeating class certification.