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The Firm has defended numerous class and mass actions involving a variety of ERISA claims, including claims pleaded as ERISA claims and claims pleaded as state law claims but successfully removed under ERISA. In one pre-CAFA mass action, Mike Pennington, Jeff Blackwood and Steve Thomas successfully and simultaneously removed 100 individual fraud actions simultaneously filed in various state courts in Mississippi by a notorious plaintiffs’ firm, ultimately resulting in a global settlement of those and several hundred other individual cases for a nominal per case amount. In another, Mike Pennington and Chris Christie defended an ERISA plan fiduciary against breach of fiduciary duty charges in an ESOP transaction, ultimately achieving a settlement in which the Firm’s client obtained a release without being required to contribute any out-of-pocket funds to the settlement. Chris devotes a large part of his practice to defending ERISA litigation.
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