On January 3, 2006, a group of former employees filed suit under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, 29 U.S.C. §§1001-1461 ("ERISA"), against Pharmacia Pension Plan, Pfizer Inc. and Monsanto Company in United States District Court for the Southern District of Illinois. The plaintiffs, represented by private counsel, asked the Court for injunctive and equitable relief alleging that the defendants were unlawfully miscalculating pension benefits. On January 1, 1997, Monsanto converted its employees' pension plans from conventional benefit plans taking a specified percentage of a participant's salary to cash balance plans where the benefit is based upon a hypothetical account balance. Monsanto later split into two and plaintiffs alleged that after the conversion of their plans and split of the company they were no longer receiving the benefits they should have been receiving.

On May 10, 2006 the district court (Judge G. Patrick Murphy) denied plaintiff's motion to appoint plaintiff's counsel as interim class counsel. On June 14, 2006 the court (Judge Murphy) denied the defendants' motion to dismiss. A number of other cases with the same essential complaints and issues had been filed between 2004 and 2006 and on September 1, 2006 the case was consolidated with others under the lead case Walker v. Monsanto Co. Pension Plan. Subsequent developments can be found under that case in the collection.

Michael Perry - 08/30/2010


compress summary