(Bloomberg News) Black Merrill Lynch financial advisors suing for discrimination can pursue their case as a group, an appeals court ruled, reversing a lower-court decision.
The U.S. Appeals Court panel in Chicago issued its ruling today. The court said allowing class treatment will prevent courts from having to decide in individual trials whether the challenged practices by Merrill Lynch, now part of Bank of America Corp., were illegal.
"We have trouble seeing the downside of the limited class-action treatment that we think would be appropriate in this case," Circuit Judge Richard A. Posner wrote for the unanimous three-judge panel.
Broker George McReynolds of Nashville, Tennessee, sued in 2005, alleging Merrill Lynch's practices and procedures favored white financial advisors over their black counterparts, impairing their ability to make comparable incomes.
McReynolds, along with other plaintiffs who joined the case after he filed it, sought to represent about 700 advisors and trainees who worked in the firm's Global Private Client unit since January 2001.
Shirley Norton, a spokeswoman for Charlotte, North Carolina-based Bank of America, didn't immediately return a call seeking comment on the ruling.
The case is McReynolds v. Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Inc., 11-3639, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit (Chicago), and 05-cv-6583, U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois (Chicago).