From Pension Litigation Attorneys

 On January 27, 2020, Charlie Monk, Paul Heylman, and Geoff Gamble from Saul Ewing Arnstein & Lehr LLP will be attending the membership meeting to provide an update on the pension litigation.  In addition to answering questions from the membership, the lawyers will discuss matters relating to class notice, damage calculations under the Court’s decision for retirement and retirement-eligible members (and their beneficiaries), the anticipated final trial court judgment, and the upcoming appeals.  An overview of the discussion is as follows:

On December 5, 2019, Judge Julie R. Rubin approved the class notice proposed by the parties and set timelines for mailing the notice and for class members to opt out of the class.  The class notice (with an appendix A explaining damage calculation methodologies) is being mailed to members who were retired or eligible to retire as of June 30, 2010, and their beneficiaries, during the week of December 30, 2019.  Class members have until February 28, 2020 to opt out of the class.  The lawyers will answer questions the membership has about options relating to class notice.

In addition, the lawyers will discuss upcoming steps in the litigation.  After the actuaries have finalized  the damages calculations under the methodology approved by the Court, the parties will submit to the Court a proposed final judgment, which will include the damages awarded to each class member who is entitled to a money recovery.  The Court will approve the judgment, which will end the trial court case.  Once final judgment has been approved and entered, we will be entitled to file an appeal of the various decisions by Judge Rubin with which we disagree.  We intend to appeal, among other things, the Court’s ruling (a) that the City may make prospective changes to the benefits promised to active members under the Plan, (b) that the City did not breach its pension contract with the active members when it enacted Ordinance 10-306, and
(c) regarding the damages methodology used by the City’s actuary expert and adopted by Judge Rubin in calculating damages.