Forman v. TriHealth, Inc., No. 21-3977 (6th Cir. 2022)
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In a suit under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) 29 U.S.C. 1104(a)(1)(B), concerning the duty of prudence as applied to the investment options that a company offers to its employees for their 401(k) and other defined-contribution plans, plaintiffs (employees) argued: (1) that the employer, TriHealth, should not have offered its employees the option of investing their retirement money in actively managed funds, (2) that the performance of several funds was deficient at certain points, (3) that the overall fees charged for the investment options were too high, and (4) that even if a prudent investor might make available a wide range of valid investment decisions in a given year, only an imprudent financier would offer a more expensive share when he could offer a functionally identical share for less.
The Sixth Circuit reversed, in part, the dismissal of the suit, rejecting the first three claims as foreclosed by recent precedent. However, the plaintiffs’ claim that TriHealth offered them more expensive mutual fund shares when shares with the same investment strategy, the same management team, and the same investments were available to their retirement plan at lower costs stated a plausible claim that TriHealth acted imprudently.
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