Timothy Smith Jr. v. AT&T Fidelity Investments
Published: Oct. 6, 2023 | Result Date: Jun. 13, 2023 | Filing Date: May 25, 2021 |Case number: 3:21-cv-03941-JD Bench Decision – Dismissal
Judge
Court
USDC Northern District of California
Attorneys
Plaintiff
Tiega-Noel Varlack
(Varlack Legal Services)
Defendant
Katherine P. Gardiner
(WFBM LLP)
Laurie E. Sherwood
(WFBM LLP)
Facts
Plaintiff Timothy Smith brought claims against Defendants Fidelity Workplace Services LLC and AT&T Services Inc., pursuant to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA).
Result
The court dismissed his First Amended Complaint because it did not provide enough facts to plausibly allege that Smith had submitted a claim for benefits under his wife's pension plan and exhausted the plan's administrative remedies. Nor did it plausibly allege that defendants had violated ERISA. The court advised that Smith's allegations should explain why he had no reason to believe he was a beneficiary between his wife's death in 2007 and the notice he received from the Social Security administration in 2020. The Second Amended Complaint did little to remedy these concerns; it did not explain why Smith's claim had surfaced so many years after his wife's passing, and did not address the exhaustion issue. Accordingly, after determining that further amendment would be futile, the court granted defendants' motion to dismiss without leave to amend.
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