On June 22, 2006, female financial advisers employed by Morgan Stanley, a financial services firm, filed this class action complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia under Title VII and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), alleging that Morgan Stanley had a systemic pattern and practice of discriminating against female employees in compensation, promotions, and other areas. Specifically, the plaintiffs alleged that Morgan Stanley discriminated against them in promotions, compensation, business, referrals, training, mentoring, and partnership agreements. The complaint requested to certify a class of "[a]ll women employed by Morgan Stanley as financial advisers at any time between August 5, 2003 and the present." Represented by private counsel, the plaintiffs sought: a declaratory judgment; front pay, benefits, back pay, compensatory and punitive damages; liquidated damages for the ADEA claim to the individual plaintiffs; injunctive relief barring Morgan Stanley from engaging in discriminatory practices and compelling them to develop new policies; and attorneys' fees, experts' fees, and costs.
On April 24, 2007, the plaintiffs filed a motion for preliminary approval of class action settlement agreement. They filed two revised settlement agreements on July 11 and July 17, respectively. On October 1, 2007, the plaintiffs requested final approval of the settlement.
On October 26, 2007, District Judge Richard W. Roberts certified the class, approved the settlement agreement, and approved attorneys' fees and costs. The Court retained jurisdiction over administration of the settlement. The plaintiff class was defined as “all women who were employed as Financial Advisors or Registered Financial Advisor Trainees in the Global Wealth Management Group of Morgan Stanley & Co. Incorporated (“Morgan Stanley”) or its predecessor(s) at any time from August 5, 2003 through June 30, 2007.”
The agreement contained a five-year enforcement period and required the defendant to pay $46 million, $32.5 million of which was allocated for class members' claims and $13.5 million for attorneys' fees, costs as well as monitoring and compliance. A special master was appointed to determine class members' awards based on their contributions to the defendant's business, the discrimination they faced, and other factors according to a formula detailed in the settlement.
The injunctive relief included distribution of an anti-harassment policy to all employees; posting positions on an internal job bank; establishing objective promotion and hiring criteria; implementing diversity training; revising the "power ranking" system that ranks financial advisors' production; changing account distribution and referral policies; implementing a complaint process; and other changes. The parties also agreed to appoint a diversity monitor who would report semi-annually to class counsel and to appoint industrial psychologists to develop programs to recruit and promote more women.
Only September 19, 2011, the parties jointly proposed to seek transfer of a related case from the Northern District of California to this court for consideration of a proposed consolidated settlement agreement. Judge Roberts approved the consolidation on December 8, 2011 and administratively closed Amochaev v. Citigroup Global Markets Inc. [Case No. C-051298 (PJH)]. The parties filed a consolidated settlement agreement on June 22, 2012.
On February 15, 2013, Judge Roberts approved the consolidated class action settlement agreement. The class from the second case was defined as “all women employed as Financial Advisors in (i) the United States branches of Smith Barney’s retail brokerage division at any time from August 30, 2003 forward or (ii) the California branches of Smith Barney’s retail brokerage division at any time from June 25, 2003 forward.” Other terms of the consolidated settlement agreement were similar to the one from before, except that the consolidated agreement added the following: developing a computerized system to generate mail notification of new entry level positions; making recommendations for programs to increase the participation of women; reporting quarterly on efforts in areas of sourcing, recruiting, mentoring a diverse workforce, etc. This settlement agreement was binding on the parties until October 1, 2015.
On September 29, 2015, the plaintiffs moved to extend the consolidated settlement agreement for two additional years because the original agreement was set to expire on September 30, 2015. On April 6, 2016, the case was reassigned to Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly because Judge Roberts has retired. Judge Kollar-Kotelly granted the motion to extend the settlement agreement, which was effective October 1, 2015 through September 30, 2017.
There has been no docket activity since the deadline passed, so this case is presumably closed.
Eric Weiler - 07/03/2010
Sichun Liu - 05/25/2019
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