Labor Department’s Stock Plan Enforcement Dinged as Unreasonable

The Labor Department’s unsuccessful lawsuit targeting a Hawaii architectural firm’s employee stock ownership plan was so unreasonable that the department should have been forced to pay attorneys’ fees, the ESOP Association told the Ninth Circuit in an amicus brief.

The department sued Bowers & Kubota Consulting Inc. and related parties for allegedly mishandling a $40 million stock plan transaction, despite the department’s decades-long failure to enact appropriate regulations to guide these transactions, the ESOP Association said in a brief filed Wednesday. According to the association, the lawsuit hinged on the very issue the department has refused to address through the ...