Hess Will Face Trimmed Legal Challenge to Retirement Plan Funds

Hess Corp. must defend the selection of T. Rowe Price target date funds in its employees’ 401(k) plan, a US judge said, but it defeated claims challenging other plan investment options as imprudent.

The proposed class action plausibly alleges that the plan’s T. Rowe Price mutual funds should have been swapped with less expensive collective trust versions of the same investments, Judge James Wesley Hendrix said in a March 21 opinion. Hess said the two investment categories are regulated differently and thus can’t be properly compared in a lawsuit, but Hendrix found enough similarities between the two to allow ...