Supreme Court considers retirement plan lawsuits

The U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments Tuesday about a case that centers on whether there should be a six-year time limit on being able to sue a company over its oversight of funds it offers in a retirement plan. The question has pitted the AARP, the U.S. Solicitor General and others against groups representing employers and the financial industry.

“The people who run these plans have a legitimate interest in saying: look you can’t sue us for 20 years of damage,” says Norman Stein, a professor at Drexel University who is an expert on laws surrounding employee benefits and pensions.

But employers are arguing that that six-year limit should apply not to damages, but to when a fund was introduced into a company’s retirement plan. That would limit the number of funds subject to lawsuits.