Catalina J. Vergara

In Vergara’s Employee Retirement Income Security Act litigation practice, she represents retirement plan sponsors and service providers in class actions brought by plan participants alleging that plan fiduciaries breached their duties or committed prohibited transactions in selecting and monitoring plan investment options or in causing the plan to pay excessive fees.

The act was passed by Congress in 1974 to set minimum standards for most employer established pension and health plans in private industry to protect workers’ retirement assets.

“ERISA is a fascinating area of law, and the plaintiffs bar has been increasingly active in this space,” she said. “The resulting suits against big companies’ 401(k) plans come with potentially astronomical damages. The ERISA statutory scheme can be described as complicated, and there are thorny questions to grapple with.”

Vergara’s clients include The Walt Disney Company, City National Bank, Transamerica Corp., Franklin Resources Inc. and Chevron Corp.

In one potential class action, former and current participants in the $19 billion Chevron Employee Savings Investment Plan alleged that plan fiduciaries violated their duties by charging participants’ excessive administrative and investment management fees, selecting and offering what were claimed to be excessively high-priced investment options, and allegedly failing to remove investment options that performed poorly.

“Plaintiffs have often been able to exploit the statutory and regulatory scheme to get past motions to dismiss and leverage that to negotiate settlements,” Vergara said. “My job is to try to knock these cases out early.”

Vergara’s motion to dismiss was granted by Chief U.S. District Judge Phyllis J. Hamilton of Oakland just six months after the suit was filed. White v. Chevron Corp., 4:16-cv-00793 (N.D. Cal., filed Feb. 17, 2016). The plaintiffs’ lawyers filed an amended complaint; Vergara’s motion to dismiss that pleading is pending.

The U.S. Department of Labor sued City National Bank over allegations that its in-house 401(k) plan charged excessive fees that resulted in $4 million in losses. Senior U.S. District Judge Terry J. Hatter Jr. of Los Angeles denied Vergara’s motion for partial summary judgment in February. She and O’Melveny’s appellate team has appealed the denial to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Perez v. City National Corp., 2:15-cv-03084 (C.D. Cal., filed April 24, 2016).

Vergara said she learned about ERISA issues while clerking for U.S. District Judge James V. Selna of Santa Ana. “I became fascinated when we worked on ERISA cases in chambers,” she added. “I had studied nothing about ERISA in law school. These cases are dealing with an evolving area of law. I certainly enjoy what I do.”

— John Roemer