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Intel Corp. Inv. Policy Comm. v. Sulyma

The Pension Rights Center filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court in Intel Corp. Inv. Policy Comm. v. Sulyma on October 28, 2019 asking the Court to agree with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that sending an e-mail to Christopher Sulyma notifying him that information about his retirement savings plans’ investments was available on a website did not give him “actual knowledge” that his money had been mismanaged. Federal law says that lawsuits claiming mismanagement can be brought within six years of the wrongful acts unless there is actual knowledge of the wrongdoing, in which case they must be brought within three years. The Center’s brief pointed out that Sulyma ‎didn’t recall seeing fact sheets on the plans’ website that would ‎have told him that his money had been invested in hedge funds and other highly risky investments, and that he wouldn’t have understood the documents if he had seen them. It was only after more than three years and less than six that Sulyma learned that the plans, and his accounts in those plans, had lost large amounts of money. The brief focuses on the language of the law and its history, and notes that “most participants are not financially sophisticated, and no matter how well-educated, lack the financial expertise to evaluate plan investment decisions based simply on plan disclosures.”