On March 11, 2022, Wolf Popper LLP filed a motion for class certification on behalf of persons who maintained Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Incorporated on-line retirement brokerage accounts, and whose cash balances were swept by Merrill to low-yielding deposit accounts controlled by its affiliate, Bank of America, N.A.
The motion is supported by discovery conducted following a January 25, 2021 Opinion from Judge Valerie Caproni of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, granting plaintiff leave to file an amended complaint. The Opinion, among other things, found that the amended complaint sufficiently alleged that Merrill had breached its contractual obligation with customers to provide a “reasonable” rate of interest on retirement assets by sweeping cash into accounts that paid interest “significantly lower than the average rates paid by FDIC-insured banks on deposit accounts across the United States.”
The class certification motion is also supported by an expert report from Micah Officer, a professor of finance at Loyola Marymount University. In his report, Dr. Officer opines that damages caused by Merrill’s contractual failure to provide a reasonable rate of interest may be determined on a class-wide basis using accepted and reliable methodologies. Decision on the class motion is currently pending.
The public version of the plaintiff’s opening brief, which includes the proposed class definitions sought to be certified, may be found by clicking the link available on this page.