Lockheed to Pay $62 Million to End Worker Pension Lawsuit

The lawsuit was filed in 2006 by the St. Louis law firm Schlichter Bogard & Denton LLP, which has waged similar battles with mixed success against Swiss generator-maker ABB Ltd., power-generating company Exelon Corp. and Caterpillar Inc., the Peoria, Illinois-based earth-moving equipment maker.

Schlichter initially won an award of more than $35 million against ABB's U.S.-based unit and Fidelity Management Trust Co. Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to reinstate $21.8 million that was cut from that on an appeal.

The Caterpillar case settled for more than $16 million in 2010. The case against Chicago-based Exelon was thrown out.

Lockheed employees and retirees claim they were charged "unreasonable and excessive" fees that weren't incurred solely for their benefit and weren't disclosed, according to an amended complaint filed in 2011. The company denied the allegations.

Mercer Bullard, a University of Mississippi law professor and founder of Fund Democracy, an advocacy organization for mutual fund shareholders, said he believed the Lockheed accord was the largest publicly disclosed settlement in a pension plan management case.

He credited lead plaintiffs' lawyer Jerome Schlichter and new U.S. Labor Department regulations with driving down adviser fees nationwide.

The case is Abbott v. Lockheed Martin Corp., 06-cv-00701, U.S. District Court, Southern District of Illinois (East St. Louis).

– To contact the reporter on this story: Andrew Harris in federal court in Chicago at [email protected]. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Michael Hytha at [email protected] Peter Blumberg, Andrew Dunn