Lynn v. Peabody Energy Corp.

250 F. Supp. 3d 372, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 48468
CourtDistrict Court, E.D. Missouri
DecidedMarch 30, 2017
DocketCase No. 4:15CV00916 AGF
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 250 F. Supp. 3d 372 (Lynn v. Peabody Energy Corp.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, E.D. Missouri primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Lynn v. Peabody Energy Corp., 250 F. Supp. 3d 372, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 48468 (E.D. Mo. 2017).

Opinion

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

AUDREY G. FLEISSIG, UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

This putative class action is brought under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, (“ERISA”), claiming breach of fiduciary duties by Defendants, the fiduciaries of three ERISA-governed Employee Stock Option Plans (“ESOPs”) made available to employees of Peabody Energy Corporation (“Peabody”) as retirement investment options. The matter is before the Court on Defendants’ motion (ECF No. 83) to dismiss Plaintiffs’ Second Amended Class Action Complaint for failure to state a claim. Oral argument was held on the motion. For the reasons set forth below, the motion to dismiss will be granted.

BACKGROUND

Plaintiffs initiated this action on June 11, 2015, on behalf of three Peabody ESOP Plans1 and their participants and beneficiaries. Pursuant to Plan documents, participants in each of the Plans directed how their investments were to be allocated among various investment options, including the “Peabody Energy Stock Fund” which could consist 100% of Peabody stock. Named as Defendants in Plaintiffs’ original complaint were three Peabody-related corporate entities, and various entities and individuals who allegedly had responsibilities regarding the management and investment of the Plans’ assets. Plaintiffs asserted that all Defendants were ERISA fiduciaries who breached their fiduciary duties by continuing to offer Peabody Stock as an investment option for the Plans from December 14, 2012, onward (the Class Period) when it was imprudent to do so; maintaining the Plans’ existing significant investment in Peabody Stock when it was no longer a prudent investment for the Plans; failing to avoid conflicts of interest; and failing adequately to monitor other persons to whom management of the Plans was delegated. The imprudence alleged was based on the collapse of coal prices during the Class Period and indications that Peabody was headed to bankruptcy.

On November 8, 2015, approximately five months after the initial complaint was filed, the Office of the Attorney General of New York (“NYAG”) issued an “Assurance of Discontinuance” based on an investigation concerning disclosures made by Peabody about climate change and the potential effects of climate change on Peabody’s future business. The NYAG found that Peabody had misstated in its SEC Form 10-K filings from 2011 through 2014, that it could not reasonably predict the impact regulatory action regarding emissions from coal combustion would have on Peabody’s future business, when in fact, Peabody had made market projections in the [375]*375ordinary course of business that found that certain potential regulatory scenarios could “materially and adversely” impact Peabody’s future financial condition. In addition in numerous SEC filings, Peabody omitted less favorable projections of the International Energy Agency for future coal demand. The Assurance of Discontinuance further stated that Peabody neither admitted nor denied the NYAG’s findings, but agreed that in future SEC filings and public communications it would not engage in the above-described behavior. ECF No. 72-1. •

In December 2015, Peabody appointed Gallagher Fiduciary Advisors, LLC, (“Gallagher”) to serve as an independent fiduciary and investment manager for the Plans with respect to the Peabody Stock Fund. By letter dated February 26, 2016, Gallagher informed the ESOP participants that it had decided (1) to “restrict the [Peabody] Stock Fund to all participant activity effective as of March 9, 2016, and (2) to eliminate the [Peabody] Stock Fund as an investment option in each Plan, on or around March 16, 2016.” ECF No. 88-1. Gallagher stated that it had concluded that “maintaining the [Peabody] Stock Fund as an investment option is no longer consistent with the fiduciary responsibility provisions of ERISA, and that Gallagher’s decision “simply reflects [its] judgment, as a fiduciary, • that it is in the interest of the Plans’ participants to eliminate [their].exposure within the Plans through the [Peabody] Stock Fund to the risks facing the Company and Peabody Stock.” Id.

The second amended—and operative— complaint was filed on March 11, 2016. ECF. No. 72. Defendants are the Retirement Committees of the three Plans that were charged with selecting and monitoring the Plans’ investment options; individual members of the Retirement Committees; the Board of Directors of PIC that appointed the PIC Plan Retirement Committee members; and individual members of the PIC Board of Directors. The gravamen of Plaintiffs’ claims continues to be that Defendants breached their duties as ERISA fiduciaries by retaining Peabody stock as a retirement investment option in the Plans from December 14, 2012, onward. To their original claim that purchasing/retaining Peabody. stock was imprudent due to public information about the global decline in coal prices and clear indi-cia during the Class Period that Peabody was headed toward bankruptcy (“public information claim”), Plaintiffs add a claim that purchasing/retaining the stock was imprudent due to the stock price being “artificially inflated.” Plaintiffs allege that •Defendants should have known this because of nonpublic information of which they were aware but withheld, namely that laws and regulations to cut. carbon emissions from the combustion of coal would have a detrimental effect on Peabody stock (“inside information claim”). As a remedy, Plaintiffs seek monetary damages that would restore the values of the Plans’ assets to what they would have been if the Plans had been properly administered.

In their second amended complaint, Plaintiffs plead that facts such as the following rendered continued investment of Plans’ assets in Peabody common stock imprudent: (a) the collapse of coal prices which drastically and for the foreseeable future compromised Peabody’s financial health; (b) Peabody’s deteriorating “Z-score”—a formula used by financial profesr sionals to predict whether a company is likely to go into bankruptcy—which indicated that Peabody was is in danger of bankruptcy; (c) an excessive increase in the Company’s debt to equity ratio; and (d) increased costs due to the acquisition of an Australian coal company. Plaintiffs fault Defendants for continuing to allow Plaintiffs “to gamble their retirement savings on a ‘pure coal play,’ ” despite the “predic[376]*376tions that the domestic coal market was facing a long-term, if not permanent, sea-change.” Id. at 9-10.

' Plaintiffs also claim that Peabody stock was “artificially inflated” during the Class Period because certain information about risks to Peabody’s' business was hot disclosed to the market, as found by the NYAG—namely, the extent of the adverse effect that regulations on emissions from coal combustion would have on Peabody. To support this nonpublic information claim, Plaintiffs posit two alternative actions that Defendants should have taken: (1) “directed that all Company and Plan Participant contributions to-the Company Stock fund be held in cash rather than be used to purchase Peabody stock”; and (2) “closed the Company Stock itself to further contributions and directed that contributions be diverted from Company Stock.” Id. at 99-100. - ■

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Bluebook (online)
250 F. Supp. 3d 372, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 48468, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/lynn-v-peabody-energy-corp-moed-2017.