A Wisconsin federal judge granted preliminary approval to settle a class action lawsuit after a four-year dispute between former credit union employees and the Credit Union Retirement Plan Association (CURPA), according to a March 30 court filing.
The class action lawsuit was originally filed in April 2022 in U.S. District Court in Madison by plaintiffs Brenda L. Lucero, Heather Barton, Cynthia Hurtado and Ilona Kompaniiets, all former credit union employees who participated in a multiple-employer CURPA 401(k) plan. They alleged that plan administrators failed to control recordkeeping fees and breached their fiduciary duties under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA).
Although more than 100 credit unions joined the CURPA plan under separate agreements, this class action lawsuit ended up involving about 1,000 employees who worked at the $1.5 billion FirstLight Federal Credit Union in El Paso, Texas and the $3.3 billion California Coast Credit Union in San Diego, Calif. They were enrolled in the CUPRA plan from 2026 to 2021.
The preliminary approval document did not show the settlement amount. However, the damages totaled $474,396 for employees who participated in the CUPRA plan from 2016 to 2021, according to court documents filed in December. The damages, however, were 45% to 64% lower for the plan's participants from 2022 to the present because CUPRA substantially lowered its recordkeeping fees.
The amount that will be paid to each employee will be calculated by the settlement's plan of allocation and an administrator.
CURPA and its board of directors didn't agree with the concept that the plaintiffs have incurred any damages and admitted to no liability in this litigation, but they didn't object to the settlement agreement, according to court documents.
Peter Strozniak can be reached at peter.strozniak@art-network.com.
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