Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC has requested dismissal from a lawsuit alleging mismanagement of a retirement savings plan for employees of business processing outsourcing service provider Alorica Inc. In a filing on Monday in Santa Ana federal court, Morgan Stanley argued that it had been “improperly lumped” into a revision of the suit 17 months after the matter was initially filed.
The breach of fiduciary duty suit, brought under the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), does not include specific allegations regarding Morgan Stanley’s duties to the plaintiffs, the services it provided, or the actions it supposedly took that breached those duties, the investment adviser asserted.
“Plaintiffs’ broad unsupported conclusions regarding the collective ‘defendants’ are insufficient to state a claim against” Morgan Stanley, the investment adviser argued.
The latest version of the claims, from March, was brought by former Alorica employees Melissa Olsen, Aaron Munoz, and Cyndy Paniagua. They targeted their former employer, its retirement savings plan committee, both as an entity and as individual members, two of Alorica’s benefits executives, and Morgan Stanley as a co-fiduciary of the retirement plan.
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