Churchill Mortgage Stock Plan Lawsuit Scores Class Treatment

Former employees of Tennessee mortgage lender Churchill Holdings Inc. secured class certification in a lawsuit saying their employee stock ownership plan was forced to buy shares from the company’s chief executive at a grossly inflated price.

The class covers all the ESOP’s vested participants since May 2017—a time in which the plan covered more than 700 people each year. Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw Jr. granted the employees’ unopposed class certification motion in an order docketed Thursday in the US District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee.

• The lawsuit centers on a 2020 transaction in which the ESOP paid more ...