Wells Fargo & Co. has agreed to settle a $79 million class action lawsuit covering more than1,000 former financial advisers who said they were forced to forfeit deferred compensation when they left the company.
The case is pending before in U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina, according to a report by Bloomberg Law.
Former financial adviser Robert Berry, the lead plaintiff in the case, said he gave up nearly $200,000 in deferred compensation when he resigned from the company in 2014. Berry started with Wells Fargo in 1999, according to his BrokerCheck profile. He now owns Berry Financial Group in Lexington, S.C., an affiliate of LPL Financial.
Berry claimed the plan’s forfeiture provision violated the Employee Retirement Income Security Act. Wells Fargo has denied such a claim and has maintained that the plan was largely exempt from ERISA as a “top hat” plan for high-level employees.
According to Bloomberg Law report, the he parties reached a settlement after mediation with Hunter Hughes III, a familiar face in high-profile retirement plan litigation. Hughes recently brokered multimillion-dollar ERISA settlements in cases involving JP Morgan ($75 million); Phillips North America ($17 million); and Vanderbilt University ($14.5 million).
The report also said the deal allows Berry’s lawyers to seek nearly $24 million in attorneys’ fees.