PricewaterhouseCoopers Retirees Win on Liability, Class Status

PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP retirees seeking higher pension benefits notched another win Thursday, when a federal judge in Manhattan declined to decertify their long-running class action and ruled that the company is liable to them under federal benefits law.

PwC violated the Employee Retirement Income Security Act by choosing an unlawful normal retirement age for its pension plan and by using a 30-year Treasury interest rate to project participants’ benefits in the course of calculating their distributions, Judge J. Paul Oetken of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York said. PwC is therefore liable under ERISA, and the ...