Bell South Breach of Fiduciary Duty To Employees In 401K Plan - Class Action Lawsuit
Seeger Weiss Represented Thousands of Employees Against Bell South for "Enron Like" Breaches of Fiduciary Duty
Seeger Weiss represents tens of thousands of aggrieved Bell South employees in a class action suit against the company and the administrators of their 401K plan, in connection with "Enron-like" breaches of fiduciary duty. These claims stem from Defendants' failures to advise employees of investment diversification options and their having created a falsely optimistic outlook in Bell South's stock as a prudent investment for the plan. Defendants encouraged employees to invest their earnings in company stock at a time when the company was noting positive operating results, artificially-optimistic revenue growth, and other financial indicators that were found to be materially false, including revelations of accounting irregularities and losses from the company's risky venture into the highly-speculative Latin American wireless phone market.
In 2006, after considerable motion practice and discovery in the litigation, the Federal court in Atlanta, Georgia, which oversaw the litigation, granted final approval to a class action settlement that provides for, among other things, Defendant BellSouth to make matching 401k plan contributions to employees for a three-year period in cash rather than company stock; for employees during that period to have the same investment options for the company's matching contributions as they have for their own contributions, the availability of certain additional investment choices; and during that period a guaranteed minimum percentage for tone of the components in the formula used to determine the company's matching contributions.
