Wright

The Oregon Metallurgical Corporation (“Oremet”) in the late 1980s established a stock bonus pension plan for its employees (the “Plan”). The Plan’s terms mandated that a defined minimum percentage of each Plan participant’s portfolio had to be invested in Oremet stock. Following Or-emet’s merger with another company, Or-emet employees Richard Wright, Greg Buchanan, and Darell Hagan (“Plaintiffs”) and other Plan participants requested that Oremet, the Oremet plan fiduciary, and former Oremet officers and pension plan administrators (“Oremet Defendants”) investigate investment alternatives and amend the Plan to permit its participants to sell a higher percentage of employer securities than the percentage permitted by the Plan’s express terms in order to capture the “premium” generated by the merger. The Oremet Defendants rejected the Plan participants’ demands.

Plaintiffs subsequently brought suit under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (“ERISA”), 29 U.S.C. §§ 1001-1144 against the Oremet Defendants, Key Trust Company of the Northwest (the Plan’s trustee) (“Key”), and United Steel Workers of America Local 7150 (the “Union”) (collectively “Defendants”), for breach…