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On February 2, 2010, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan of the Southern District of New York granted the defendants' motion to dismiss a consolidated amended complaint brought on behalf of a putative class of participants in an employee stock ownership plan sponsored by Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. ("Lehman"). The case arose out of the Lehman bankruptcy filing last year. The complaint alleged that the defendants, eleven former and current members of Lehman's board of directors and an officer who served as chair of Lehman's employee benefits plan committee, had breached their fiduciary duties under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act ("ERISA") on the theory that the defendants knew of Lehman's financial condition but imprudently failed to protect plan participants. In dismissing the plaintiffs' complaint, the court found that the eleven director defendants were not plan fiduciaries under ERISA, and that while the sole named officer was a plan fiduciary, the plaintiffs had failed to allege that the named officer had any knowledge of Lehman's financial condition.

Simpson Thacher represented eleven of the twelve individual defendants in this action.

The STB team consists of Michael J. Chepiga, Jonathan K. Youngwood, Hiral D. Mehta and former associate Jason P. Rubin, with valuable assistance from paralegal Timothy Lobdell. Mr. Youngwood argued the motion on behalf of all defendants before Judge Kaplan last week.