Albert v. Oshkosh Corporation

Dist. Ct. did not err in granting defendants-plan administrators’ motion to dismiss plaintiff-plan beneficiary’s ERISA action, alleging that defendants breached their fiduciary duties by authorizing retirement plan to pay excessive fees for recordkeeping and administration, failing to adequately review plan’s investment portfolio to ensure that each investment option was prudent and unreasonably maintained investment advisors and consultants for plan despite availability of similar service providers with lower costs or better performance histories. With respect to plaintiff’s breach of prudence claim that concerned allegation that defendants paid excessive recordkeeping fees, plaintiffs failed to allege that recordkeeping fees paid by defendants were excessive relative to services rendered. With respect to plaintiff’s breach of prudence duty arising out of defendants’ payment of excessive fees for investment manager, plaintiffs failed to provide detailed allegations that plan beneficiaries would have received identical portfolio management services at lower cost. With respect to plaintiff’s claim that defendants paid excessive service provider fees, plaintiff failed to provide factual basis for comparison between fees paid to defendants' service provider and fees paid to other service providers. Ct. also rejected plaintiff’s claim that amounts paid to plan’s service provider were “prohibited transactions” under section 1106(a)(1)(D) of ERISA, where said individual provided essential services to plan.