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About the Case

Learn specifics about the case including updates on where the case is in the litigation process. If you have questions about where you might fit in the case or if you want to help, please visit our CONTACT US page.

On December 20, 2001, 32 former employee agents of Allstate Insurance Company filed this lawsuit in the federal district court in Philadelphia. The best way to understand the case is to read the Amended Complaint, filed in April 2010.

The Amended Complaint claims that Allstate Insurance Company and its related defendants violated the rights of the plaintiffs and many other employee agents under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (“ERISA”), the law that protects pension and other employee benefits. According to the Amended Complaint, Allstate violated ERISA through amendments to the Agents’ Pension Plan adopted during the 1990’s that effectively reduced, or cut back, agents’ early retirement benefits or restricted their ability to earn those benefits:

• In 1991, Allstate amended the Agents’ Pension Plan to phase out the “beefed up” early retirement benefits in a manner that did not preserve the benefits that agents already had accrued; and

   

• Through a series of amendments adopted between 1991 and 1996, Allstate changed several provisions in the Plan so that employee agents who had converted or converted in the future to the “Exclusive Agent” program could not continue to accrue service toward qualifying for the early retirement benefits.

Allstate also breached its fiduciary duties as to its written explanations of the changes to employee agents.

In March 2004, the district court dismissed all of plaintiffs’ claims on the basis that they had waited too long to file the lawsuit, that is, the statute of limitations had expired. The next year, the Court of Appeals reversed the decision of the district court, concluding that the issue whether plaintiffs had waited too long could not be decided based on only the facts in the complaint.

In June 2007, the district court again dismissed all of plaintiffs’ claims. It concluded that decisions in two other cases precluded the claims.

On July 29, 2009, the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit once again reversed the decision of the district court. It held that the earlier decisions did not preclude the claims, and indeed, were based on unrelated claims.

The case has now been assigned to the Honorable Ronald Buckwalter. Most plaintiffs and proposed class members signed a release of claims against Allstate in 2000 as part of a corporate reorganization that terminated their employment contracts. Judge Buckwalter has decided to focus the litigation for now on the validity of the release and its applicability to the claims in this case. To the extent that the release is invalidated or inapplicable, the plaintiffs will be allowed to attempt to prove that Allstate violated their rights when it cut back on their early retirement benefits.

For further information on the proceedings before Judge Buckwalter, please read the Case Updates and Pleadings pages.

In August 2001, the plaintiffs and several other former Allstate employee agents filed a prior class action lawsuit, arising from Allstate’s alleged violations of federal employment law, contracts and its fiduciary duties in terminating their employment contracts as part of a corporate reorganization announced in November 1999 and carried out in 2000. That case also is pending before Judge Buckwalter. For information about that lawsuit, see www.allstatecase.com.

Also in December 2001, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a lawsuit against Allstate Insurance Company claiming that Allstate violated several federal employment laws by retaliating against agents who refused to sign the release and by threatening retaliation against the other agents. That lawsuit has been consolidated with the lawsuit filed on August 1, 2001, and also is currently before Judge Buckwalter. There is no separate website regarding that lawsuit, but news about the lawsuit can be found on various pages on this site.

This website was created by Sprenger + Lang, PLLC, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP, and AARP Foundation Litigation, the lawyers for the plaintiffs and the members of the proposed class, to provide information about the lawsuit.