In Retirement Plans Committee of IBM v. Jander, the Supreme Court, in a unanimous opinion, clarified the its opinion in Fifth Third Bancorp v. Dudenhoeffer, 573 U.S. 409 (2014), which set forth the duties that administrators of Employee Stock Ownership Plans ("ESOP") owe to participants, and when they are required to act on inside information.
In this case, plaintiffs alleged that the IBM's ESOP fiduciaries violated their duty of prudence under ERISA by continuing to invest the plan's funds in IBM's stock even though they knew the stock's market price was artificially inflated. Under Dudenhoffer, a plaintiff bringing such a claim must allege that a fiduciary in the same position could not have concluded that taking a different action "would do more harm than good to the fund." The question presented to the Court in Jander was whether the plaintiffs' complaint can survive a motion to dismiss when they make only general allegations that the costs of undisclosed fraud grow over time.
Though the Court agreed to take the case, it ultimately declined to opine on the issue presented. Rather, it remanded the matter to the Second Circuit for further consideration of the SEC's position on whether an ERISA based duty to disclose inside information, that is not otherwise required to be disclosed by the securities laws, would otherwise conflict with the objectives of the insider trading and corporate disclosure requirements contained in the securities laws. IBM argued that ERISA imposed no duty to act on inside information.
Thus, the Supreme Court left unresolved the question presented regarding the pleading standard. It did, however, provide some helpful guidance to fiduciaries of ESOP plans in that it emphasized that ERISA's duty of prudence does not require a fiduciary to break the law. Thus, if taking an action on inside information would violate the securities law, there is no violation of ERISA for not taking that action. But we will also wait to see how the SEC views ERISA's duty of prudence in this context.
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