Lawyers Want $5 Million for Columbia Retirement Plan Settlement

Lawyers for Columbia University employees want nearly $5 million in fees and expenses for their work securing a $13 million settlement in a dispute over the school’s retirement plans, according to papers filed in the Southern District of New York.

A fee award of one-third the settlement amount is in line with awards from other Employee Retirement Income Security Act cases, and it is warranted given the complex and demanding subject matter and the 15,477 hours of attorney and non-attorney time it took to secure the deal, the attorneys said in an Aug. 13 motion.

The settlement, which covers a class of about 28,000 plan participants, requires the school to make forward-looking improvements to its retirement plans, including paying certain vendor rebates to the plan, notifying plan participants of their right to redirect investments, and maintaining the cheapest available share class of certain plan investments. The school also pledged to instruct its recordkeeping vendors not to use plan participants’ personal information to advertise unrelated products.

Judge George B. Daniels of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York granted preliminary approval to the deal in June, one year after ruling that the case could go to trial. The parties announced they had reached a deal less than a week before their April 12 trial date.

Columbia is one of more than 20 prominent universities to be sued under ERISA for retirement plan mismanagement since 2016. These cases have spawned nearly $120 million in settlements, one trial, and four major appeals court rulings in cases involving Northwestern University, University of Pennsylvania, Washington University in St. Louis, and New York University.

The Columbia employees are represented by Schlichter Bogard & Denton LLP. Columbia is represented by Mayer Brown LLP.

The case is Cates v. Trs. of Columbia Univ., S.D.N.Y., No. 1:16-cv-06524, motion for attorneys’ fees 8/13/21.