United States Sixth Circuit

In former Owens Corning (OC) employees' class action lawsuit against the fiduciaries of their retirement plans pursuant to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), claiming that the fiduciaries failed to protect plan participants by not divesting the plans of the OC stock before the shares became virtually worthless when the company filed for bankruptcy, district court's holding that the plaintiffs' claims against the fiduciaries were time-barred is affirmed where: 1) because the plaintiffs did not file their first complaint until September 2006, their claims against the OC defendants are time-barred as their knowledge, that they had been harmed because their investments in OC stocks had lost almost all value, and that someone was acting to manage those investments, was sufficient to trigger the three-year statute of limitations period; 2) district court did not err in denying plaintiffs' motion to amend because their allegations are not sufficient to invoke the fraud-or-concealment exceptions for ERISA's statute of limitations; 3) equitable tolling is not appropriate in this case as, one of the named plaintiffs in this action did not lack notice of her right to file suit under ERISA; and 4) plaintiffs' claims against the trustee of the plan are barred by ERISA's three-year statute of limitations as they had actual knowledge of the relevant facts regarding the trustee's alleged breach by October 2003 but did not file suit until December 2006.

Appellate Information

• Argued 03/10/2010
• Decided 09/27/2010
• Published 09/27/2010

Judges

• GILMAN

Court

• United States Sixth Circuit

Counsel

• For Appellant:
  
• Gregory Yann Porter, Erin E. Kelly