milbergweiss.com: MILBERG WEISS OBTAINS $90 MILLION SETTLEMENT IN ROYAL DUTCH SHELL ERISA LITIGATION; ONE OF THE LARGEST SETTLEMENTS IN ERISA HISTORY, AMOUNT REFLECTS AN IMPRESSIVE 78% RECOVERY: Posted 19 January 2006
(ShellNews.net: An article we missed)
Milberg Weiss, acting as one of three Co-Lead Counsel, has negotiated one of the largest settlements in history in a case brought under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, as amended ("ERISA").
Through our efforts, Milberg Weiss has obtained a very substantial recovery for those who, during the period from December 3, 1999 through April 29, 2004, were United States participants in the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company’s or The "Shell" Transport and Trading Company’s (collectively, "RD Shell") ERISA plans.
The Settlement is embodied a Stipulation of Settlement, dated July 8, 2005, which provides for a recovery to the Class of $90,000,000. In addition to this being one of the largest settlements in history in a case brought under ERISA, this result also reflects a recovery of 78% of the Class’s damages, based upon the Class’s expert’s view that a reasonable but conservative calculation would show that the damages to the plans totaled $115,719,038.
In addition, Defendants also have agreed to pay the Class’s out-of-pocket expenses in prosecuting the litigation, as well as the costs incurred in providing notice of the settlement to Class Members. These are all costs that otherwise would be paid by the Class.
In addition, Milberg Weiss also negotiated important provisions to the settlement agreement that will require the corporate defendants to adopt specific structural relief, including procedures regarding the monitoring and training of individuals appointed to be ERISA fiduciaries. This is all despite the fact that the United States Department of Justice recently announced that it was dropping its own parallel criminal investigation. See Press Release, United States Attorney, S.D.N.Y., U.S. Decides Not To Prosecute Shell (June 29, 2005). We expect that these settlement provisions will provide a template for future settlements in this area.
The litigation itself was prosecuted with remarkable speed and efficiency. The initial Complaints were filed in March and April of 2004 and, pursuant to a Court Order entered on June 30, 2004, plaintiffs filed their Consolidated Complaint on July 30, 2004. Plaintiffs then insisted on an extremely short schedule for the defendants’ motions to dismiss, and successfully forced the defendants to begin the discovery process simultaneous with the briefing, notwithstanding their arguments to the Court that all discovery should be stayed pending the outcome of the motions to dismiss in the parallel securities litigation, which was under a far more elongated schedule. (The motions to dismiss in the securities case were only decided on August 9, 2005, after Milberg’s case had already settled!). Ultimately, defendants produced and Milberg Weiss and its co-counsel reviewed nearly 800 boxes of documents (comprised of substantially in excess of 2,400,000 pages, largely in electronic format). We also deposed and/or interviewed the defendants and several trustees for the ERISA plans, in New York, New York, London, England, and The Hague, The Netherlands.
The result, we think, speaks for itself.
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