Columbia Settles Retirement Plan Class Action Days Before Trial

Columbia University trustees settled a 28,000-person class action challenging the school’s retirement plans less than a week before the case was scheduled to begin an in-person trial, the parties told a Manhattan federal judge Wednesday.

The settlement notice comes one week after Judge George B. Daniels ordered all designated witnesses to testify in person at the Employee Retirement Income Security Act trial, scheduled to begin April 12 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

More than a dozen of Columbia’s witnesses expressed discomfort about testifying in person during the Covid-19 pandemic, but Daniels said the ...