Prior Successes

GLF has successfully concluded a significant number of the cases it has filed. Among the Firm's successes:

• A pension class action filed against Laurent v. PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP on behalf of 16,000 former employees that contended that PwC used a fictitious definition of "retirement" and other illegal plan terms to evade the law's lump sum distribution requirements and short-change employees when they left the Firm and requested a cash-out of their plan benefit. The case settled in January 2023 for $267 million. More details of the case and the settlement can be found at LaurentPensionClassAction.com.

• A pension benefit misrepresentation case against Foot Locker, Inc. that, after trial, yielded a judgment in the class's favor of $300 million. The case challenged Foot Locker's conversion of its traditional pension plan into a "cash balance" plan which was implemented in a way that resulted in an extended "wear-away" freeze period during which many Plan participants earned no benefits whatsoever for several years despite having been told they were. The court held Foot Locker accountable for falsely portraying the effect of the conversion and fraudulently obtaining employees' services without providing them with the pension benefits they were told they were earning.

• A pension miscalculation case against Colgate-Palmolive Company alleging that Colgate violated the law's anti-excessive "backloading" requirements and anti-forfeiture requirements in calculating employees' pensions. GLF together with co-counsel recovered $45 million for approximately 8,000 current and former Colgate-Palmolive employees. The case, filed in 2007, settled in 2014.

• A lump sum underpayment case against S.C. Johnson & Sons, Inc. retirement plan and a spin-off company plan challenging the manner in which the two otherwise identical plans calculated retiring or terminating employees' lump sum pay-outs. The class won significant rulings from the trial court in 2010, the court of appeals in 2011 and, after remand, the trial court again in 2012. While on appeal again to the Seventh Circuit, the case settled in 2014 for nearly $45 million.

• A benefit miscalculation case against Meriter Health Services, Inc., a Madison, Wisconsin hospital and its pension plan challenging the legality, under the terms of the plan and/or under ERISA, of the defendants' method for calculating benefits under the plan's indexed-annuity-based formula. Despite the fact that the district court granted summary judgment to the defense on significant aspects of plaintiffs' case, GLF's tenacious pursuit on the case on behalf of the approximately 6,000 member class resulted in an $82 million settlement.

• A lump sum underpayment case against Alliant Energy that went to trial in 2010 with favorable rulings obtained for the class in 2010, 2011 and 2012. Those rulings were substantially affirmed by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in 2013 and resulted in additional payouts totaling approximately $20 million.

• A pension plan lump sum underpayment case against Wisconsin Energy Corp. GLF recovered $45 million for approximately 3,000 former Wisconsin Energy employees in that case, settled in 2012.

• A pension plan lump sum underpayment case against The Turner Construction Co., one of the largest building services providers in the country. GLF recovered $14.5 million for approximately 2,500 former Turner employees in that case, settled in 2011.

• A pension plan lump sum underpayment case against Avnet, the largest distributors of electronic components in the country. GLF recovered $34 million for approximately 4,500 former Avnet employees in that case, settled in 2010.


• A pension plan lump sum underpayment case against one of the country's leading law firms, Skadden, Arps. GLF recovered $12.4 million recovered on behalf of more than 1,000 former Skadden Arps employees in that case, settled in 2009.