Two Colorado Law Firms Forced to Pay $1.5M for ‘Reckless’ Litigation Claims
The U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado has issued a new order in a long-running Employee Retirement Income Security Act lawsuit targeting Great-West Life & Annuity Insurance Co. and Great-West Capital Management LLC.
The suit had previously been dismissed by the District Court, which determined that the plaintiffs did not meet their burden of proof and that they did not establish that any actual damages resulted from defendants’ alleged breach of fiduciary duty. The ruling was subsequently affirmed by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and the courts issued a sanction declaring that the plaintiffs’ law firms Schlichter Bogard & Denton LLP and Schneider Wallace Cottrell Konecky LLP behaved “recklessly” in the matter.
The sanction order declared that “any experienced plaintiffs’ counsel who objectively assessed the merits of this case should have anticipated the result.” The District Court pointed out that the plaintiffs recognized, in their response to the defendants’ motion for sanctions, that no plaintiff who has pursued a similar claim under Section 36(b) of the Investment Company Act has ever won in the 50 years of the section’s existence.
