December 2, 2024
A New York federal judge agreed to revive in-court proceedings on a Luxottica ex-worker’s claims in a federal benefits lawsuit that she made on behalf of her pension plan, but held firm on the court’s earlier decision to compel individual arbitration of other claims.
In a 50-page opinion and order docketed Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Nusrat J. Choudhury partially granted Janet Duke’s motion for reconsideration of a 2023 order that had granted a motion to dismiss and to compel arbitration of her Employee Retirement Income Security Act suit.
Duke first sued Luxottica U.S. Holdings Corp., subsidiary Oakley Inc. and Luxottica’s pension plan and investment committee in 2021. Duke said the companies’ use of outdated mortality tables and an incorrect interest rate lowered pension plan participants’ joint-and-survivor annuity benefits below what they would have received if they elected a single-life annuity. Joint-and-survivor annuities provide an individual and their spouse benefits for life in exchange for lower payments, but ERISA requires that those pension plan benefits be actuarially equivalent.
Judge Choudhury said an arbitration provision in a dispute resolution agreement that Duke signed in 2015 was unenforceable as to claims brought on behalf of her pension plan. That’s because it would require Duke “to waive her statutory rights under Sections 409 and 502(a)(2) to bring representative claims on behalf of the plan and to seek plan-wide remedies,” Judge Choudhury said.
Judge Choudhury refers to the sections of ERISA that authorize individuals to sue on behalf of a benefit plan for fiduciary breach and for damages resulting from those breaches.
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Duke and the proposed class are represented by Michelle C. Yau, Daniel Sutter and Ryan A. Wheeler of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, Todd Jackson and Nina Wasow of Feinberg Jackson Worthman & Wasow LLP, Peter K. Stris, Rachana A. Pathak, Victor O’Connell, John Stokes and Dana Berkowitz of Stris & Maher LLP and Shaun P. Martin of the University of San Diego Law School.
Read Ex-Luxottica Worker’s Pension Claims Must Be Heard In Court.