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On March 31, 2010, Judge Sidney H. Stein of the Southern District of New York granted the defendants’ motion for judgment on the pleadings brought on behalf of a putative class of participants in an eligible individual account plan sponsored by J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. (“JPMorgan Chase”), and Chase Manhattan Bank (“Chase”).  The case arose out of the 2001 collapse of Enron.  Plaintiffs principally maintained that defendants, JPMorgan Chase, JPMorgan Investment Services, the Plan Investment Management Committee, the Benefits Fiduciary Committee, and a number of individual officers, had breached their fiduciary duties under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (“ERISA”) on the theory that defendants knew or should have known that JPMorgan Chase had billions of dollars in undisclosed loss exposure to Enron yet failed to protect plan participants.  In granting defendants’ motion, the court held that plaintiffs failed to allege that (1) Chase and JPMorgan Chase common stock was an imprudent investment, (2) what statements, if any, made by defendants were materially misleading, and (3) that defendants were acting as fiduciaries when they made statements about JPMorgan Chase’s financial condition. 

Simpson Thacher represented all of the defendants in this action and the Simpson Thacher team consisted of Thomas C. Rice, Jonathan K. Youngwood, George Wang, Janet A. Gochman, and Hiral D. Mehta, with valuable assistance from paralegals Clyte White and Austin Leach.