King v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.
This case involved allegations that Wal-Mart and other fiduciaries of the Wal-Mart Profit Sharing and 401(k) Plan (the “Plan”) breached their fiduciary duties to Plan Participants. They did so in connection with Wal-Mart’s underpayment of retirement benefits to hourly employees of Wal-Mart who participated in the Plan.
The Plan provided that Wal-Mart contribute to the Plan each year a percentage of the annual “regular salary or wages” of Wal-Mart’s employees. Although Wal-Mart publicly proclaimed that it was contributing a specified percentage of employee wages to the Plan each year, in reality Wal-Mart underpaid its contributions to the Plan by wrongfully manipulating the underlying employee wages on which Wal-Mart based Plan contributions. Wal-Mart did so through a variety of illicit practices that involved deletion from employee payroll records of hundreds of thousands of hours of time worked.
