North Carolina-based Old Dominion Freight Line, Inc. has been named as a defendant in a lawsuit involving the administration and pricing of its retirement plan offerings.
The lawsuit was filed by an employee in November 2022 in the federal Middle District of North Carolina. The plaintiff alleges the retirement plan administrators breached their fiduciary duty of prudence imposed by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA).
The suit regarding the Old Dominion 401(k) Retirement Plan covers the period from November 18, 2016, to the present. According to the lawsuit, the 401(k)-plan held $2.02 billion in assets as of Dec. 31, 2021.
The plaintiff is requesting class action status that could cover as many as 24,033 plan participants. The plaintiff alleged the company breached its fiduciary duty of prudence by permitting Great-West Financial Retirement Plan Services, LLC, an affiliate of Empower Financial, which is the plan's recordkeeper, to charge excessive fees on investments. According to the lawsuit, the expense ratio was typically about one-tenth of a percent higher than similar options within the same fund.
The plaintiff alleged that defendant selected and retained for the plan high-priced investments when the identical investment was available to the plan at a fraction of the cost. The lawsuit claims the higher fees resulted in over three million dollars in reduced value during that time. "Old Dominion Freight Line faces 401(k) lawsuit" www.insurancenewsnet.com (Dec. 06, 2022).