Cases & Developments

Memorandum of Decision granting-in-part and denying-in-part Defendants’ Motion for Summary Judgment. Plaintiffs, two former or current participants in 401(k) plans at Boston College from 2016 to the present, brought this class action against the College and its Plan Investment Committee alleging that they did not act prudently with respect to certain Plan recordkeeping fees and certain investments and that they did not follow the Plan Investment Policy Statement (IPS) or properly monitor Plan fiduciaries and service providers. The court dismissed the recordkeeping fee claims related to 2016 to 2018 for lack of evidence of loss, but it permitted the claims related to fees from 2018 to the present to proceed, finding genuine disputes as to whether it was prudent not to consolidate to a single recordkeeper, whether the Committee was aware of a distinction among fees, and whether Committee members had a conflict of interest warranting recusal. The court permitted plaintiffs to proceed regarding the prudence of the challenged investments, finding factual disputes as to whether the Committee sufficiently discussed and considered alternatives to two investment accounts, but it dismissed their claim that the Committee failed to monitor these investments. It also dismissed the claim that the Committee failed to follow the Plan IPS, finding that the IPS permitted the Committee significant discretion on whether to change investments and that the Committee had met the IPS’s documentation requirements.