Shirley Sherrod MD PC Target Benefit Pension lLan and Trust v. Suntrust Investment Services, Inc.

CourtDistrict Court, E.D. Michigan
DecidedMarch 28, 2022
Docket3:21-cv-10484
StatusUnknown

This text of Shirley Sherrod MD PC Target Benefit Pension lLan and Trust v. Suntrust Investment Services, Inc. (Shirley Sherrod MD PC Target Benefit Pension lLan and Trust v. Suntrust Investment Services, Inc.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, E.D. Michigan primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Shirley Sherrod MD PC Target Benefit Pension lLan and Trust v. Suntrust Investment Services, Inc., (E.D. Mich. 2022).

Opinion

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF MICHIGAN SOUTHERN DIVISION ______________________________________________________________________

SHIRLEY T. SHERROD MD PC TARGET BENEFIT PENSION PLAN AND TRUST,

Plaintiff,

v. Case No. 21-10484

SUNTRUST INVESTMENT SERVICES, INC.,

Defendant. ________________________________/

OPINION AND ORDER GRANTING DEFENDANT’S MOTION TO DISMISS

Plaintiff Shirley T. Sherrod M.D. PC Target Benefit Pension Plan and Trust (“Plaintiff Plan”) brings this action seeking declaratory, injunctive relief, and monetary damages against Defendant SunTrust Investment Services.1 (ECF No. 4.) Plaintiff Plan’s complaint seeks relief under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (“ERISA”), 29 U.S.C. §§ 1001, et seq. Defendant holds assets of the Plaintiff Plan in an investment account in the name of the Plaintiff Plan. Before the court is Defendant’s motion to dismiss this action in its entirety pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(1) and 12(b)(6). The court has reviewed the record and does not find a hearing to be necessary. E.D. Mich. LR 7.1(f)(2). For the reasons provided below, the court will grant Defendant’s motion and dismiss. (ECF No. 4).

1 The parties subsequently agreed to the dismissal of a second Defendant, Truist Financial Corporation, by stipulation. I. BACKGROUND The history of the present action is long and circuitous; its genesis was the 2008 sale of an ophthalmology medical practice by Dr. Shirley Sherrod to purchaser Dr. Michael Sherman. (ECF No. 1, PageID.2.) The $245,000 sale resulted in over a decade

of litigation for breach of contract in Wayne County Circuit Court (“Michigan Action”). See Michael S. Sherman, D.O., P.C. v. Shirley T. Sherrod, M.D., P.C., No. 299045, 2013 WL 2360189, at *1 (Mich. Ct. App. May 30, 2013). The Northern District of Illinois, in another closely related case, recently summarized the procedural history of the Michigan Action: The defendants in the Michigan Action are Dr. Sherrod individually and her former medical practice. (hereafter, “Michigan Defendants”). In 2013, the Wayne County Circuit Court entered summary judgment in favor of Dr. Sherman and conducted a jury trial on damages. On July 31, 2014, the trial court entered an order, which among other things, prohibited Michigan Defendants or anyone acting on their behalf from “sell[ing], transfer[ring], assign[ing], .... or otherwise dispos[ing] of any Trust Assets in any manner, pending further order of this court.” (Dkt. 35-2, Exh. B, hereafter “2014 freeze order”). The order defined the “Trust” as the Shirley T. Sherrod MD PC Target Benefit Pension Plan and Trust. After a 2014 trial, the Michigan Defendants appealed several of the trial court's orders, including the 2014 freeze order and the order holding Dr. Sherrod in contempt for violating the 2014 freeze order. See Sherman v. Sherrod, 2015 Mich. App. LEXIS 2416, 2015 WL 9257954, (Ct. App. Dec. 17, 2015). The appellate court affirmed the freeze order and contempt order, as well as an award of attorney's fees to Michigan plaintiffs. Id. Although the appellate court stated there was “no uncertainty as to the fact of damages concerning defendants’ breach of contract”, it remanded for a new trial on damages because the trial court should have allowed evidence about the amount of damages attributable to the breach. Id. at *14–15.

More recently, in September 2019, a jury again entered a verdict in favor of Dr. Sherman, and on November 25, 2019, Dr. Sherrod appealed the Michigan court's denial of Dr. Sherrod's motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict. (See Dkt. 38 at 3–5). LJ Consulting Servs., LLC v. SunTrust Inv. Servs., Inc., No. 19-CV-06763, 2020 WL 469677, at *1-2 (N.D. Ill. Jan. 29, 2020), appeal dismissed sub nom. While the Plaintiff Plan was not a party to the Michigan Action, the ongoing litigation did affect the Plan. In 2019, the clerk of the Wayne County Circuit Court issued two writs of garnishment,

targeting accounts held in the name of Dr. Sherrod and her professional corporation at Defendant SunTrust, a financial institution. (ECF Nos. 6-2, PageID.49-53.) The garnishment writs indicate that, inclusive of interest, Dr. Sherman seeks to collect on a judgment now valued at $534,000. (Id.) Exhibits filed by Plaintiff indicate that Defendant responded to the October 2019 writs of garnishment by freezing the personal checking and savings accounts held by Dr. Sherrod containing $49,248.17 and also freezing a pension plan—presumably the “property” of Plaintiff Plan—containing $533,738.67. (Id., PageID.44-45.) Defendant kept all these accounts under freeze and “refus[ed] to disburse money from the [Plaintiff] Plan pursuant to the Michigan state court's July 31, 2014 freeze order and a

2019 garnishment order.” LJ Consulting Servs., LLC, 2020 WL 469677, at *2. The Plaintiff Plan has engaged in litigation in venues around the country against Defendant SunTrust, arguing that Defendant is violating ERISA by freezing Plaintiff Plan’s assets. For instance, in January 2020, the Northern District of Illinois dismissed without prejudice Plaintiff Plan’s suit (“Illinois Action”) against the same Defendants seeking “to ‘enjoin [SunTrust's] wrongful attachment and alienation of the assets of the [Plan].’” LJ Consulting Servs., LLC, 2020 WL 469677, at *1. The court noted that “Plaintiffs have not alleged or provided evidence that [Defendant] SunTrust has taken any position or action related to using the Plan to satisfy the Michigan judgments.” Id. at 3. The court dismissed the lawsuit, holding that “Plaintiffs have not shown that they have met the requirements of Article III standing because their alleged injury was caused by the Michigan court's 2014 freeze order, not by SunTrust.” Id. (citing Johnson v. Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith, Inc., 719 F.3d 601, 602 (7th Cir. 2013)).2

Plaintiff Plan appealed the decision, but the Seventh Circuit dismissed the case “for lack of prosecution” after Plaintiff failed to obtain new counsel to represent the Plaintiff Plan in the appeal. See LJ Consulting Servs., LLC v. SunTrust Inv. Servs., Inc., No. 20-1171, 2020 WL 8457707, at *1 (7th Cir. July 15, 2020). Following the dismissal of the Illinois action, Dr. Sherrod, as an individual, filed a new action in Charleston County Circuit Court in South Carolina “seeking a declaratory judgment that the funds in the Personal [checking and savings] Accounts [held by Defendant SunTrust] are exempt from distribution to third parties.” (ECF No. 6-2, PageID.46). This action has also been dismissed by the trial court. See Shirley T Sherrod v. Suntrust Banks Inc, et al., No. 2020-CP-10-00706 (S.C. Cir. Ct. June 30,

2020). (ECF No. 11-3, PageID.147.) In addition to these concluded actions, there is an active dispute between Plaintiff Plan and the U.S. Department of Labor (“the DOL Action”) in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. See Hugler v. Sherrod, 246 F. Supp. 3d 1224 (N.D. Ill. 2017). The action, brought by the DOL in 2016, alleges that the Plaintiff Plan

2 Evincing the long running nature of the present dispute, the district court’s reasoning in LJ Consulting Servs. relied heavily on a Seventh Circuit opinion from a previous iteration of essentially the same case.

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Shirley Sherrod MD PC Target Benefit Pension lLan and Trust v. Suntrust Investment Services, Inc., Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/shirley-sherrod-md-pc-target-benefit-pension-llan-and-trust-v-suntrust-mied-2022.